A beekeeper transfers a nucleus colony into a full-sized hive, inspecting each frame for brood and stores before introducing an F1 Buckfast queen from Black Mountain Honey. He shakes out the bees, fills gaps with foundation frames, and uses checkerboarding to help the colony build strong comb.
Let's hive up this nuc into this beehive. Beautiful frame of stores. Next frame, open brood, eggs, and larvae. Next frame, lots of happy bees, stores, and some pollen. Beautiful slabs of brood, pollen coming in. It's a good time to be a beekeeper. Open brood and one F1 Buckfast queen from Black Mountain Honey. Isn't she a stunner? So busy laying an egg there, we'll leave her to it. Let's get her straight in. Final frame, new foundation that has sagged a little bit. Let's get that straight in. Always really important, give your bees a super good shake to get everyone out of the nuc, then fill up any gaps with frames of foundation. And what I like to do at this time of the year with the 6th So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is to do a small amount of checkerboarding. So I take away frame 1 and I bring a frame of foundation in 1 like this. Do it on that side, and I'll do it on this side as well. You fill up all of the gaps. Every single gap needs to be filled, every single connector needs to be touching, and that checkerboarding will see this colony off to a brilliant start.
