My First Nucleus - Ep 3 - Adding a Super to a Nuc – When To Use a Queen Excluder and Why It Matters

So they're over 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and that's where I found the queen. So first objective ticked off, I found the queen. So then next frame in, again another really nice strong frame of brood. And then this frame here is a, is a perfect demonstration of the strength of this colony. These are the ones to look for, nice and light, little bit of stores, full to the brim, side to side, top to bottom with eggs. So the position that we're in in this colony now is that every single frame is drawn out, every single frame has something in it. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. We are on to episode 3 of the My First Nuclear series, and in the video today we're going to take a look at how the colony is getting on. We're going to speed the video up a little bit today and I'm going to give you just a picture of every single frame, show you how much stores are in there, show you how much brood is in there, little close-up of the queen, check for swarm cells, check for disease. We're going to add a queen excluder today, and we're going to add a super on today as well because the bees are running out of space. So we could have had the queen excluder and the super last week, but I just wanted to break up the videos just to give you it in bite-sized pieces so you can flick through the series and see what's going on. What I'm expecting to see today is the brood box full to the brim, bees across all 10 frames, probably going to be a little bit honey bound. We're going to take a look at that frame of foundation that we put in last week, fully expect that to be fully drawn out, backfilled with eggs, and I'm going to show you what your colony should look like when you add the super and the queen excluder on. So let's get straight into it, bee suit on, smoker lit, and we'll open up the colony. So the bees seem in a reasonable mood, it's It's about 14 degrees here today. Obviously, don't go into your colonies if it's anything less than, say, 13 or 14 degrees, and obviously only go in for a reason. Weekly inspections is a good enough reason because they will swarm at this time of the year, and I've already lost a swarm. So you need to make sure you're going in, doing your weekly inspections frame by frame, checking for swarm cells. So as we said before, the first thing you're looking for is you want to see when the bees are hitting around 80% of the frames. This is a 10-frame brood box, And the bees are easily covering nine frames here, easily, probably a little bit more. So my trigger has been reached, and I'm going to add my queen excluder and my super. So we're definitely going to do that. And if you want a rough guideline as to what your bees should look like when you're going to be adding that queen excluder, this is a really, really good example of it. When your bees look like this, get the queen excluders on, get your supers on. They need extra space. So first thing I'm going to do, I'm just going to quickly run through. Frame by frame, starting at the frame closest to me, frame number 10. We're gonna go all the way through to the front, and I'm just gonna show you a picture of every single one. You can see for yourself what's in the frame, whether it's stores, brood, brood in all stages, drone brood, worker brood. Have a look and see how it goes from stores on one side into the brood nest into the middle, and then stores again at the front. Right, there you go. So that's every single frame from front to back. So 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And if you remember, frame 3 was a sheet of foundation last week with that hole in the middle. And as predicted, it is now completely drawn out, completely laid up and full of eggs. So I just wanted to draw that to your attention. That is the way you deal with a honey-bound colony. There was too much stores in it last week, so we took away that frame of stores and we added a frame of foundation. You can keep on doing that to a colony when the weather's good and it's going to help Reduce the chances of swarming. This colony here though, really, really doing well. Really happy with them. It's a very simple way forward with these. They are at the stage now we're going to pop that queen excluder on, we're going to pop a super on. I've done an inspection, every single frame, can't see any disease. They've got plenty of food, no swarm cells. So I'm going to close them back up, going to put that queen excluder on, put the brood box on, and these guys are good to go for another week. You don't need to dwell on the inspections. Don't think, oh, it's only taken me 5 or 10 minutes, I must be doing something wrong. Less is more. And as long as you're seeing eggs, you don't need to see the queen. They've got enough space, there's no disease, and they've got enough food. All of the standard things that you do in any inspection. Then close them back up and just let them get on with it. So when you put your queen excluder on, give them a little puff of smoke, get them all down. Get them off the edges there. Try not to squish any bees. Sometimes it's difficult not to squish any, but if you give them a good smoke like that, you'll see they've all gone away from the top now. Make sure you push all your frames back up together again. Then take your queen excluder. Any queen excluder will do. I'm using an oak-framed wire queen excluder here. Place that on top and then take your super. And you'll notice this is actually a brood box, but anything above the queen excluder is effectively a super. Somewhere to store honey. That's the manipulation complete. So then you want to put your crown board back on. I use a feeder as a crown board, so this will not have any syrup in it until August, September. Just easy for me just to keep it all in one place and then pop that roof back on. So there we go. That's the video complete. Going to really condense these videos down going forward. So it's not a case of me doing a 15, 20-minute video showing you, talking to you about everything that I'm doing. It's just giving you that snapshot of what is happening with the colony on a week-by-week basis. And we will address any issues as they arise. So if they go to swarm, if we see play cups, anything at all, and we'll just manage it through this single colony. Last thing I just want to draw to your attention though is the way that they started to draw additional comb down underneath the frames. And that is a classic sign that they've not got enough space. And that's a classic sign that they've got stuff coming in. There's incoming nectar, incoming food, and the bees want to expand. Now, if you don't see that trigger or you don't take any action on that trigger, Perfect way to get your bees to swarm because they will realise they've not got enough space. It will trigger them to think, we need to do something here, this cavity that we've got is too small for us, and the only thing that they can do in that situation is swarm. So that's a real issue that beginner beekeepers have, is not knowing when to move to that next step. So you'll notice here we're on episode 3 of My First Nucleus, 3 weeks in, and we're adding a super. Just bear that in mind. It's best to add the super a little bit early rather than a little bit late, because if you restrict them to a smaller size of box, you can set that swarming impulse going, and it's very difficult to stop it and to quench it. And by adding space at a later date, it doesn't necessarily resolve the issue. So you're best to be just a little bit ahead. Like I said, 8 frames or 80% of the frames filled with bees, that's your trigger for the next box. The same thing works with this box here. As soon as I've got 8 frames full of honey out of my 11 that are in this super, I'm going to go up to the next box again. And you just keep on doing that until the bees tell you, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're putting too many boxes on. And then you can leave them and let them fill it up. So there you go, that's it for the video. Hopefully it was a little bit shorter this week. Hopefully it was useful. Really nice big strong colony here though. My prediction next week is they're going to have filled out that brood box even further. They're going to be well and truly up In the super, which is a brood box. Probably not gonna have brought much in, but they're gonna be up there repairing it, getting it ready for when the real strong nectar flows arrive. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you found it useful. As always, please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.