👉 Transferring a Nuc for the First Time

We're switching it up. I'm putting down the smoker, picking up the camera, and Zane is going to be the beekeeper. You excited, Zane?

Yeah, I guess so. I don't know what I'm doing, but we'll give it a go.

Right, first thing, Zane, I'm going to give you all of the instructions, but obviously I can't do anything because I'm holding the camera. So first thing, veil up. If you can get it all zipped up nice.

No problem.

And then you've got some gloves as well. If you pull the ring pulls, you'll see on the, on those ones there, and I don't think you've got ring pulls, so on the new models you have ring pulls.

Yeah, it's all right.

These are my new favourite gloves, see everyone with the orange gloves now. I think Gwynny Griff made them famous, they're cool.

We got them in focus? It's not easy using the camera, is it?

It's not. I am— my arms are hurting a bit already. I know when I asked Zane for the super high-up shots and said, can you just hold it up there? Now I realize why he's not that keen. But Zane, you're going to do all the work.

Yeah.

So not only are we going to have a look inside this hive here, this little national nuc, we're going to put it into the beehive and you are going to do it all. So this is how it would turn up. So my first nuc. I'm going to do this every single week with Zane, and this is going to be Zane's beehive. So first up, you've got your smoker there, but the bees are Pretty chilled out. I think you'd be good if you take off that top roof. Just put that off to one side, and then you can see all of the bees in there. And then it is screwed down. So if you take those four screws out, Zane.

Okay, Coke.

How you feeling?

Do you know? I'm all right. I don't mind. I think I've spent a lot of time around bees, so I'm quite chill around them. I haven't got a clue what I'm doing. No.

So my only bit of advice to you at the beginning is I would just say enjoy it, but just take things slow.

Okay.

If you're not sure, ask the question before you do something, because it is— you can kill queens or you can do damage.

Yeah.

But with that caveat in mind, yeah, just kind of enjoy it and have fun. So if you get that roof off nice and gentle, that should pop straight off. And there you can see we've got a full 6-frame colony of bees. So like, you're a complete beginner, what would you think if you saw If you saw that, Zane, there's bees. They're bees.

Genuinely, that's all I've got in me. And there's six frames.

Yeah.

They could be healthy. They could be unhealthy. I couldn't tell you. But they look. They're moving. They look pretty chill.

Scared? Would you be a bit scared or?

Maybe a bit. These seem pretty relaxed. If they were flying out at me, I think I'd probably panic a bit.

Okay, cool. Right. So you've seen the videos I've done before about the three foot and three mile rule. We're going to use that like technique now to get all of the bees from that nuc into the new beehive. So now that we've had a look inside, if you just pop that roof back on.

Yep.

And then that's it, nice and gentle. And then if you pick up the whole nuc.

Yep. Yeah. Do you want me to move it along?

Yeah, we're just going to take it like all the way over the other side. To where the beehive is over there.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, just out the way.

Okay, it's a lot heavier than I thought.

Yeah, a lot heavier. So this is what you do, you'd put your nuc on the stand somewhere and then you would let them orientate for a bit, and then if you pick up this hive that's next to it there, Zane, that's it. And what we want to do is pick up the new beehive and place it just kind of where the nuc was, with the entrance facing exactly the same way.

Where's the entrance?

Ah, this one here, it's got the funniest entrance. I picked the wrong hive. If you just pick up all of the boxes except the bottom one, Yes. This is a crazy underfloor entrance with a mesh. So that side that you've got your hand on there, Zane, that's it, that's the entrance. Yeah, so this is like a super wasp-proof underfloor entrance. Did that as a prototype a few years ago. That's cool, that's taken ages for that one to resurface. You've got a cool floor there, Zane. Right, stick that on, and then our job is going to be putting all of the nucs frames in there. So you'll see that's pre-populated with frames.

I don't know what that was.

Yeah, that fell out. Don't worry about that, that's just like a crown board. So what we want to do, first thing we want to do is just take out 6 frames there, the middle 6 frames, because we want to take like leave a 6-frame space for a nuc. So you can just take them out, go and pop them somewhere else.

Okay, 2, 3, that's it, 5, 6.

So then the idea is, you can see the nuc over there, we're going to go and bring the nuc back over And just place every single frame in there one by one.

So when you say the nuc, you mean just the frames?

That's it. No, you can— I've just put it back over there just to show that the bees will start going in. You can see a couple of them going there now.

Okay.

Bring it back over now. If you pop it right next to me.

So if I just slide this along a bit then?

Yeah, good shout.

Just for a second.

Right, so the idea now, Zane, is going to be to get all of those 6 frames into the nuc.

Okay.

As safely as you possibly can. The thing that you're looking for here, you really do want to find the queen if you can. But don't worry if you can't. But go on, I'm just going to let you—

Quick question.

Yeah, quick question.

Does it matter? Obviously these frames are this way, those frames are that way. Would it— does it matter which way that goes, or?

It's interesting, it's a really good question, that one. So it doesn't really matter, but there is actually a different way of saying it. So the way that they're set up on the big hive is called the warm way, but you could pick that box up and turn it 90 degrees and have it what's called the cold way. And it's all about how the frames are in relation to the entrance.

For the direction of the air.

It doesn't make a massive difference. Yeah, I prefer the warm way because it means that you get to manage the frames from behind, which is better for your back.

Okay, I'm conscious that you're holding the gimbal and I feel really bad because I don't know how heavy it is. I know, that's why it's good.

Right, first tip I'm going to give you though, then, is when you take off the roof like that, the first thing you always do, yeah, is like you're doing, take a look on the, on the board, see if you can see a queen.

Okay, no.

Always a risk that you take the board off like that, put it down somewhere, and the queen's on it. So I always have a little glance on that and then go and put it somewhere safe off to one side.

Okay.

Yeah, you can put it down there, that's fine. I thought I'd just jump in here because you do need to see some things, and I couldn't really explain it to Zane, so I thought I'd show him. What I was going to say was you can't just pull the frame out when it comes. You need to make sure that it's properly separated and you've got enough space to actually like pull the frames out without killing or squishing the queen. So the way that you do that is with your hive tool, and what I like to do is just break them a bit like that, see if there's any movement. You're effectively trying to put all of the frames that way and all of the frames that way to leave a single frame that you can get out. So just make the space for it there, and then once you've got the first one done and it can come out like that, then all the rest of them are good. So I'll hand it back to Zane, and I'll leave the hive to him. I'm getting stung on the ear as well.

What, now?

Yeah.

Currently being stung?

I'm being stung on the ear. Can you not see it on the ear?

I can see it. Are you just not bothered?

Well, it does hurt.

See, I would be running like a girl.

See if you can get like a close-up of this one here. You can see it nearly coming out. It's crazy.

I can't tell if it's focused or not, dude.

Let me see if I can get it on my phone. It's still pulsating in my skin. I, I'm a little bit nervous now after they stung me like that. That was, that was pretty cool. I can't believe how it was pulsating like that.

Being stung is not pretty cool.

Well, I know.

Okay, pulsating was cool, but not— I'm battening down the hatches here.

Right, okay, so Zane, so I have taken that frame there, 3rd one in from my side, and that's nice and free now. So if you move that hive tool just somewhere, and then we're going to try and, yeah, take that frame out. So go from one side and you just want to pull it out and just kind of keep it as much space either side, nice and gentle, just straight up all the way. And as I said, what we're looking for here Is the queen, and Zane's just a natural beekeeper, obviously, because look at that. If you flip it up the other way, Zane, that's it. You've got one queen bee there. You see her?

No. Where am I looking?

All right, so keep on looking. She might have just ducked. Yeah, she's just come back up. She's just come back on that side again.

Oh yeah, there you go. Easy.

So let's have a look.

Yeah, that's it's pretty. I can see why you mark them. That's Nice and clear, isn't it?

Yeah. Sorry, I'm leaning that right in your face.

It's alright.

So that's the easiest bit, Zane. You are a natural. If you take that frame now and you just wanna place that into the beehive, and we're gonna build our nuc around that frame there.

Anywhere in particular? Just—

Nope, that's fine there.

Okay.

So the things that you're looking for when you're transferring over the nuc, you wanna see the queen, you wanna see some eggs. But if you find the queen on the frame like that, just get it in and that's the hardest part done.

Okay.

So then if you grab either of the frame, you can go either way now. Next one along, and then pull it out again. Yeah, and then we're gonna have a look and see if we can see any eggs. So go on, have a look and see what you see.

Yeah, I think I can see. They kind of look like mini maggots.

Mini maggots. Yeah, so they're larvae. And then can you see like any mini Tic Tacs at the bottom?

Tic Tacs. I don't know. Maybe you can have a look.

Let's see if I can see.

You're a lot. Your eyes are a lot better than mine.

Yeah, it's hard. It is hard to see, but we'll flash up, we'll flash up some on the screen. This is what you're looking for here. And if you see little eggs like that, then all is good and you can just transfer it over. So all you need to do now, Zane, is just transfer the frames over. Try and keep them in the same order. Yeah. So that's it. That's right. That's right there.

Yeah.

Yeah. You want to build them out that way and then see the spacers on the side. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. You want to get them right next to each other. That's it. Touching each other.

Okay.

That's it, perfect. So then we just continue like that until we get all of the frames over.

So try and build it the same way I've taken it out?

Exactly like that, yeah. And the reason we do that is because it just means that all of the combs, the way they've been built out, are not going to conflict with a different comb. So you just want to go next to the exact same comb again.

I've already forgot which way I was taking it out.

That's it, you're doing it there. If you place that down, and then what I do there is I take the opportunity just to— everything close to you, just bring it back to you. That's it. Press it all. That's it.

That's it.

And you're just minimizing any gaps or any space or anything like that. That's it. And then that final one.

I just wonder, I wish I could talk to the bees and just say, right, just bodge out of the way for a second.

Yeah, well, I tell you what, if you stop there, there is a tool for that.

So if you grab the smoker. Smoker, yes.

Yeah, that's exactly what the smoker's there for, and I should have probably introduced that, but the smoker is great for getting the bees to go down. It's also great for not being able to find the queen, so perfect now. If you just give them a little puff.

Not much coming out.

I think the smoker's gone out. Okay, but you'll see, you'll see actually that's worked. You just got the final bit out of it.

Okay, a little bit there. There we go, that's a bit better.

And they've all gone down, and then you can close up those spaces. And that's really important. A lot of people don't want to close the spaces up because they think they're going to squish the bees, but if you don't close the spaces up, you end up squishing loads more bees next time. So get them in nice and tight. Right, next one, Zane. How are you feeling, like nerves-wise, now?

I don't know, I'm pretty chill. I've always been quite nervous about being around bees as well. Yeah, okay, that's good. I'm actually all right. This way.

I have to say, when I got stung on the hand, I was thinking, oh, maybe this isn't the best The best nuke for Zane, but they are pretty chilled, aren't they?

Ignore, ignore my bad practice.

This is Zane's patenting that one. That's the the X, the X.

That's the the X drop. Okay. But yeah, same thing again. Bit of smoke again, or do you not want to smoke them too much?

See if there's space, or probably good practice. I'd say once there's once the queen's in there, yeah, just get them down. You can see it does still work getting them to get off the. Top bars. That's it, nice.

Right, think about what you're doing, Zane. So that should go there. Okay, so I'm gonna go this way.

So as you're putting that in, Zane, I'm just gonna say I'm deliberately not going in and like telling you too much stuff about what's going on, because when I give people the recommendation to do this, I say don't, don't look for too much stuff. This isn't the learning one. You just want to get the frames in. You You want to see the queen, you want to see eggs, you want to make sure they've got enough food, get them in, get them fed, and then there's plenty of extra weeks to come.

You can kind of do that like later on down the line, can't you, once you're in and settled?

Exactly.

All right, they all seem pretty chill there.

So the final one.

This way. That one's stuck a little bit.

Okay, so if you grab the hive tool. And then what you want to do is just lever it away on the spacer bit. Yeah, that's it. And if you want to get the smoke there, you can, you can smoke it so there's no V's on it. That's it, give yourself a bit of space, and then you can just kind of lever it off against that wall. Yeah, a bit further down. That's it, there. And there we go, you've broke it off.

Oh, nice.

Broken it off. You should be good then.

Ah, Zane. Am I all right?

Yeah, no, you're all good. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I was doing, I was doing one of your ones which was like a follow down like that, and then you jammed it, and I was thinking, oh, roll reversal here, roll reversal. Normally me getting it.

Okay, and if you want me to—

That's it.

Same with these, push these back.

Pull everything back. So it will leave a bit of a gap at one end like that, but don't worry, you can fill that with a thicker dummy frame at some point if needed. But that's the configuration, you want everything touching like that. So Zane, imagine you hadn't found the queen yet.

Yeah.

The recommendation that I'm going to give you now is to make sure that you get all of the bees, every single bee that's in this nuc over here, into the hive, and then that way you're pretty certain that you've got the queen in there. So imagine you hadn't got the queen yet and you're thinking, oh, the queen could still be in here somewhere.

Okay.

What I want you to do is lift that up, Off. I'll tell you what, before you do that, just reach down into it. Is there a float down in there?

There is a float, yeah.

Okay, cool, that's fine, that's fine.

Is there a way of getting it out?

No, no, no, so it's just going to fall out. I'll just know it'll be there. If you lift it up—

There's quite a bit of food in there as well.

What, liquid?

Yeah.

Oh, that's just going to go everywhere. Okay, right, so there's nothing really that you can— that is a little bit frustrating, that one. Hmm. And we're just going to go and try and pour that syrup off down kind of into the undergrowth over here. It's right towards the end of the day at the moment. This definitely isn't ideal, but what's less ideal is not getting the queen. You need to get the queen out. So we're going to pour that down there. That's it, that'd be fine, Lindsay.

All right.

Wasn't too much there. And then what you need to do, lift it up over the beehive upside down, and you just want to give it like A few whacks and a few shakes to get as many bees out. You need to be quite aggressive here, so big whacks and big shakes to get them all to come out. Okay, that's it, keep on going. Bang, bang, bang, bang. That's it, get them all out like that. And then look inside again. Anything left?

Couple of bees.

Go, give a couple more bangs so we get them all out. That's it. Right, you do that until you're happy they're all out.

Yeah.

And then we're all good. So those frames that you put up there, you need to put that crown board on. See that big wooden crown board up there? Yeah, so just pop the frames off to one side, and then if you pop that on. So that just goes straight on.

Like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, on like that. Yeah, that's fine.

These bees here, smoker?

Yeah, smoker for those. Yeah, sorry, I should have said that. So anything, they should respond to a bit of smoke and then go off. I would say, with the best intentions, you never want to kill any bees, but you will. Eventually squish a few of them. Yeah, but it's nice to take your time. I like this thing. Is that a bit of syrup?

Yeah, come on.

Okay, there we go. Okay, so put your crown board on, and if you had like a polyash forth feeder, that'd be good here as well. And then what we're going to do is we're going to give them a feed.

Got the feeder.

And then the hole that's there, if you take that— sorry, the hole, the thing that's in the hole there, On the crown board.

This thing?

Take that out, yeah, that will expose the bees. Pop the feeder directly over the top, just kind of central. That's it, yeah. And then if you put that little plastic thing back on, and then what you want to do is get that syrup from over there, Zane.

Yeah, sorry, behind you there. Oh yeah.

And then pour that in. So that's just like invert sugar syrup, thick sugar syrup. You don't want to drip it really anywhere.

All right.

Just going to get that in there. And it's really important to feed your bees when you put them in. Because you've got all that foundation in there, it means you've got a lot of work to do.

How important is it if I get it all in that feeder?

Kind of important. Don't worry if you spill it. Yeah, it's not too bad.

I don't know how this is going to go.

It glugs. So just be wary of the glugs.

Oh, God. All right. Okay.

Yeah. So you want to fill it like most— yeah, all the way up, really. So this is just nice, thick syrup. Somewhere around there. Yeah, that's perfect. I was saying, you're good at this.

Hey, tell you what.

Definitely getting you on feeding.

Tell you what.

Right, so really important to feed the nucleus because they've got a lot of work to do and they don't have a huge buffer of stores. But you know what's even more important? Yeah, this is a little trick. If you lift that, that central plastic thing, yeah, and then dribble the sugar syrup down, you'll see it all dribbles off it. Do it again, Zane, like get it back down and then drizzle it all down that hole. Yeah, and then just put it back on now and then put the lid on the top so the bees can't get in.

This is really satisfying.

Yeah, it's quite nice that. Now that's a really important thing. Yeah, you're showing the bees where that is. You can put the syrup up there and then it gets cold and the bees don't find it because they don't know where it is.

But that will make it really work.

And then the roof, the final bit. Where did we put our roof? So pop that lid on and then we are all good. That's kind of the end of the episode. Come around and look at the front here though. Remember that nuc that was on there, that little hole, that entrance that we had?

Oh yeah.

They think the entrance is there and they just can't work it out. They will work it out. The entrance is kind of underneath, you see, like you've got your finger, can you feel it? You can get your finger underneath it, it's a bit of a secret entrance for them. Okay, but they will, um, yeah, that's really interesting that they were on the inside.

That's funny, that's literally like to the millimeter, isn't it?

We were just talking there about the sting that I got there, you can see maybe on the hand.

It's proper that, isn't it?

Yeah, but for me it doesn't really— I didn't get—

See, I've been stung twice and honestly I feel like it's one of the most painful things in the world.

Well, I'll show you later in it as we go back home. That won't get any worse than that now. But it hurt, but as soon as—

I feel like it's the shock more than anything. It's like that, ah! And then, I don't know what, 30 seconds after—

And that shock and that pain never changes. It's always that ooh, and then it's not too bad. So we thought we'd take the veil off, wouldn't we, and finish the video like that. I enjoyed that, Zane. That was good fun.

No, same. I enjoyed just being this side of the camera. Yeah. Because it's different. I'm always watching you and going, oh, that looks pretty cool, I wish I could be doing that, and I'm holding the camera.

You get to hold stuff. Yeah, I enjoyed that. We were going to say next time as well, what we'll do is we'll do a bit of me not holding the camera to save my arms, but like us talking like this, because that'd be quite cool, wouldn't it?

It'd be handy to have you in the video as well a bit more, so you can, rather than sort of nodding and saying, go left, go right, just give it as a nudge.

I felt that, especially with the hive tool bit.

Yeah, yeah, I was just like, what? So what's the next steps with it then?

Oh, that is a good question. Next step, right, so that is just the standard transferring your nucs over. The advice I normally give to people is get the nuc, put it there, leave it for at least like 48 hours until they've flown in and flown out and orientated, and then do that process then, get the feeders on, and then leave it for a week.

See, it's a good job this isn't actually my nuc because there's no way I'd be leaving that 48 hours.

You want to go back in? I'd want to be like, oh, well, and I get why you say—

I know you want to go in, but don't. Because all I want to do is just open that and go back in and just have a mooch around.

So I was exactly the same, and I told everyone loads of times about my stories of going in and requeening and then kind of like looking at it and saying, gotta be— it's like 20 minutes, it's got to be done yet, pulling it out and then balling the queen and killing them. It is good advice to not do anything for a week. Now they've got everything they need, and you were lucky. Like, a lot of people don't get to see the queen.

Well, how many times have I seen you open a hive and stand there for 20 minutes trying to find a queen? I did first frame.

Yeah, first frame. So the difficult bit and the risky bit for people is not being able to find the queen or get her in there safely, and you had that perfect. So you've done the hard bit.

That was best case scenario for me. Let's be honest, I had you here and I found it first time.

It was lucky.

Yeah, if I had to go searching around, I'd be panicking.

Yeah, now that was good. So next steps, yeah, do nothing for a week and then we'll come back in, and then for the next 2 or 3 weeks, like, the real risk is that they're going to build out so quick and start swarming in this box. But really, for the next 2 or 3 weeks, you're probably not gonna have that happen.

Yeah.

So it's quite nice. These are the bits of— these are the few weeks of the beekeeping year where you really get to enjoy it. There's not that much risk of anything going wrong. As long as they're fed, they're not going to grow much more.

How often, let's say after this first week through— because obviously I literally know nothing about beekeeping— How often would you have to go in? I probably would know, like, pick up on things, but like the basics of how often do you have to go in, how often do you have to check feed, is it?

So once you've put your nuc in this position here and you've hived it up, every week. Every week until the end of the year. So you know those weeks when you're going, you've booked those holidays?

Oh yeah, well, that's a good question. If I was going on holiday, let's say you go on holiday for 2 weeks, what do you do?

So you plead with your bees, yeah, to say, come on, Don't be annoying and don't swarm the one week that I'm away. Yeah, you have like a prenuptial agreement. You go on holiday, you come back, and they swarmed every time.

And when you say swarmed, are they in the area? I should explain.

No, they will just go. I said that like tongue-in-cheek. It is the most annoying thing, and it is difficult with being a beekeeper. You can't really get away much because you do need to be in every single week. So what swarming is, is that you saw that queen. Yeah, when this colony gets bigger and bigger and bigger, if they run out of space, They will try and split themselves into 2, and the queen will form part of this swarm, and they'll just leave and go, and you get left with half of what you had here today minus the queen, which is not a good place for a beginner.

Yeah.

So we're gonna do everything we can to not make them swarm.

Okay, well, yeah, can you just look after it? Can you look after this one so I can go on holiday still?

I really hope it goes well. I look back at the last My First Nuc series and so much went wrong. But I think that's probably why people enjoyed it. So I don't, I don't, I don't think it's the end of the world if they do swarm or if things go wrong.

Well, no, it makes for more interesting video. Then we can talk about requeening and I think it'd be fun. But yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it.

We didn't have any outtakes this week. We need to get some better outtakes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should we roll some?

They're usually day in the life.

We could roll some of the day's outtakes.

Yeah, brilliant.

Do that. Okay, Zane, it was a pleasure.

Brilliant. Thanks, mate. Here we go. Handshake was very formal.

It was very formal.

That's fine.

That's fine.

Good? Yeah.

Okay. How did I start it?

Oh, hey, I'm well nervous.

Why are you nervous?

I'm genuinely very nervous. Oh, why do I keep putting my hands on my head?

I'm standing up here. It makes me look much taller. Yeah. Don't know. How are we starting it? How do we say we're going to start it?

Sorry, I'm laughing.

Why is it so bad? It's just getting into— I'm putting down the smoker, picking up the camera, and Zane's doing the beekeeping.

Alright.

Yeah.

You've dropped that on me, haven't you?

Yeah.

Okay. Why am I so bad at this?

That was alright.

That was alright. It was alright.