Laurence Edwards built 20-25 Langstroth nuc colonies from 50 wooden nucs purchased last year, with plans to sell 50 by spring 2023. He runs a 6-over-6 layout with honey on top and brood below, stocks each with an F1 Buckfast queen, and adds winter insulation to prepare them for sale.
Last year I bought myself 50 wooden Langstroth nucs. I have filled a lot of these Langstroth nucs up this year. I've been building them up, making splits, got it up to about 20-25 at the moment. In today's video I'm going to pop them open, show you just how strong my wooden Langstroth nucs are. So as you can see, quite a lot of Langstroth nucs dotted around. I think it's about 20-25 that I got in this apiary at the moment. I will be using some of them to make additional splits and they'll be in the end around 50 that will be for sale in 2023. I quite like working with wood, I really enjoy Working with Langstroth frames as well. Slight pain with these is that you have to use a frame feeder. Oh, I hate frame feeders. Just the perfect way to kill lots of bees. I really do not like frame feeders. But let's get inside. I'll show you just how nice these bees are and show you how well they're getting on ready for winter. So these bees are on a 6 over 6 configuration. Top box is all honey, and then the bottom box down here, we've got lots and lots of brood. You can see really nice calm bees, not flying up. Let's get inside, pull out some of those frames, and I'll show you just how well these bees are looking going into winter. So really nice healthy-looking frame. What I find so interesting with the Langstroth is that they do put a nice ring of stores, and they combine the use of the frames for stores and for brood. In my Nationals, I find you go into the brood nest and you'll just find it's completely brood down there. You get this really nice ring, I find, on a lot of the Langstroth nucs, and it's something that I do like about Langstroth. Only thing I don't like about Langstroth, and this is just that you get used to. The small lugs— I've definitely dropped more frames in recent weeks using these lugs. I like them because they're far less likely to break, but I don't like them because they're much easier to drop. Beautiful amount of stores on there though. Bees are backfilling that brood nest, getting themselves ready for winter. Very good laying pattern, nice healthy brood in there. You can see looking down into the colony, very, very healthy, very strong. Should have no issues getting these through the winter. I'm going to put some insulation on the top of them. That's the only thing I'm concerned about with these nucs is they've not got much top insulation. Plenty of time to still get that up to speed though. Be one of the last jobs of the winter. So there's my queen, F1 Buckfast. She's going to try and leg it off there. That is the most death-defying move ever. That queen's definitely camera shy. There you go, she can't go off if I do it like that. Should be able to see the queen on the frame there. F1 Buckfast queen means she's going to overwinter really well. Big strong colony. I'll have to make sure they've got enough feed, but they will build up really strong in the spring and they will produce lots of honey in someone's Flow Hive. So there we go, 20 or 25 Langstroth nucs going into winter. They'll be available in the spring and we'll put the reservations out in the new year.
