🐝The Overwintered Nuc System - Episode 2 - Adding A Queen

We're on to episode 2 of the overwintered nucleus series, and in today's video we're going to add a mated queen. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping, episode 2 of the overwintered nucleus series. All we're going to do in today's video is we're going to add a mated queen into our 2-frame split that we made last time. Quick recap of last time, we took one frame of brood, One frame of stores, shook loads of bees in, added loads of frames of drawn comb. We've just taken them to a new apiary here, and in today's video I'm just going to add a new queen. So no more talking, I'm going to get straight in, show you how to add a queen to a 2-frame split. Right, so we've moved the nuc into the new apiary. You may recognize this apiary, this is my My First Nucleus colony that I do my weekly updates on, and I'm going to do weekly updates on this nuc here as well. But in this video, all I'm going to do Give you a snapshot of how the bees are looking after a couple of hours after making the split. I'm going to take a mated queen in a cage, and I'm going to put her in there and leave her there for eight days until the bees draw out emergency cells on that frame of brood. And then in the next video, I'm going to come back. I'll knock down the emergency cells, pop the cap on the cage, release the queen, and then we've got a two-frame split with a mated queen, and they can begin to expand. So let's get straight on with it then. I'll show you what this colony is looking like and we'll get that queen in. Right, so here's my 2-frame split and the bees have decided it is much more comfortable for them to go and sit in the feeder. It is hot today and you look at those bees fanning, they are very warm indeed. But this doesn't matter if this happens with your colony, no problem whatsoever. Just go and pop that queen in between the frame of brood and your frame of stores. And then we can take it forward from there. So here is my queen. I've got a few dead attendants in there. She's been in the cage a long time, but it doesn't matter about the dead attendants. She's been banked and she's been fed, and she's a really healthy-looking queen. As soon as I put her in this colony here, the bees are going to go straight onto her because they'll realize they're queenless, and because there's flows on at the moment, they will feed that queen. So don't be put off by the dead attendants there. That queen has been well looked after by the previous bees where she's been banked, and the rest of the bees now are going to come out and look after her. So all I'm going to do, I'm going to take that queen, keep the tab on, so don't remove that tab, and I'm just going to pop her in between the frames like that, and then the bees will come out and they will take care of her. So you can put your lid back on, make sure the disc is open. Don't worry about the fact that they've clustered up in the feeder like that if they've done that. They will soon get the hang of it. It's just something they do when they're transported. They like to cluster up in the biggest space possible. Often you find it if you've got a void in the roof, they'll cluster up in the roof. But next video we'll come back and I guarantee you we will see 2 frames of bees. They'll be all over that queen. They've probably drawn out 1 or 2 emergency cells on that frame of brood, maybe only 1. You do find with small splits they'll only do 1 or 2. They won't pull out loads of them. They put all of their resources and energy into just doing 1 or 2 cells. We'll knock down those cells, pop the cap, and then we're good to go. But that's it for the video, just trying to break it up chunk by chunk. Hope you enjoyed that one. 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.