Laurence Edwards transfers a Buckfast nuc into two retrofitted National hives: one with cork insulation, the other with an experimental upstairs-downstairs entrance system. He shows how to move frames, find the queen, and position multiple entrances (underfloor and side) so the bees can reorient themselves to their new home.
In this video, I'm going to put this nuc of bees here into my national hive that's been retrofitted with upstairs-downstairs bee entrances. They're sitting in pride of place next to my cork insulated beehive. In this video though, we're going to transfer this one over, get the colony set up. Hopefully the bees will work out where those entrances are, and then we will see later on in the year just how well they can defend them. Let's get everything set up into place, and then we'll put the bees in. So So as with all transfers, this is where the bees are orientated to. They're in this nuc. I'm gonna take this nuc away now somewhere else, put the new beehive that I'm transferring into, into its original position, and then we can transfer the bees over and the bees will go into the new beehive. Right, there we go. Upstairs-downstairs beehive into position. Everything's set up like I showed you in the original video that I'll link you at the end. I'm gonna open it up now, transfer my frames over, and then let the bees get on with it. It's a bit of a strange one, this nuc. The bees are actually orientated to the back entrance here because I had some mating flights going on. So this colony is flying out that way, this colony actually flies out that way. So for the beginning, I'm going to put one of their entrances facing that way and then the 3 facing that way. I will change it around at a later date as soon as the bees have orientated and they know they've got multiple entrances. So this is going to be my setup. I've got one of my underfloor entrances as a floor because I don't have any solid floors available. And then all I'm going to do is I'm just going to put a piece of Correx on there. So now I'm starting off with a completely solid floor to start building my upstairs downstairs beehive. I've then taken a single National Deep. This would normally be the super. This is the one that's got the single hole because I just want to make sure that the bees know how to get in there once I start putting them in. And then on the other side, I've got my 3 entrances like that. I'm going to get the bees in there now and they're going to have to try and work it out, but I've got no doubt whatsoever they will work it out really quickly. Right, there's the frame with the queen on it. Always important to get the queen in there. Just going to make sure I get a good ID on her. And that means that she's going to be able to get all of the bees to kind of come out from the air. They'll fan their Nazanoff glands and they will tell all of the bees in the air where home is. Right, so the bees are super confused, but I've got my nuc into position now. They're all going to cluster back down. They'll find their way in. I've got a single entrance on this side. I'm going to double them up, make sure they've got 2 boxes, plenty of space at this time of year. It's nice and warm. Really difficult to put too much space on, and then we'll talk a little bit about the setup and how I think this colony is going to get on. So my nuc's in position, 6-frame nuc, F1 Buckfast with a 2022 queen. Loads of bees in the air, absolute carnage. They will work their way out once I get out of the way. I'll fill this box up now with some more frames, get that second box on, and then we'll close them up. Right, so there we go, we're complete. You might not have seen these, these are Correx crown boards that I made About 4 years ago now, and they're in such good condition still. I don't use them anymore because I moved over to polyash forth feeders, but these are in surprisingly good nick still. So it's just a straightforward double B-spaced Correx nuc pinned down with batten, no glue, nothing, and they're 4 years old and they cost me about a pound each. So if you want to know more about these, maybe I'll do a video on them. I'm going to use that as my crown board though, and then I'm going to get my roof on top. And there we go, we're completely finished! 2 new completely different hives in this apiary, an insulated wooden National retrofit cork beehive and then a wooden National that's been retrofitted using upstairs-downstairs bee entrances. Really excited for these 2 to see how they get on. If you want to see how I retrofitted this one here with the upstairs-downstairs bee entrances, check out this video here which gives you all of the details.
