Managing Colonies
NUC
You have waited for, paid for,picked up or had delivered,
maybe by mail,
( always cool for the Canada Post people)
and you have your nuclei !
What you should have in the box are 4 frames.
You will have your bees , the queen ,
some brood (bees ready to hatch) ,
and some honey and pollen to get them started.
You may keep them in the nuc box or put them in a super.
Use a little smoke to look things over,
and move bees to a larger box if you wish.
Feeding
them untill they get established is a good idea.
1:1 sugar and water
To feed them I put a sugar water filled jar
with small holes on the lid .
The jar is put upside down over a hole in the top cover
or top of the nuc over a hole on the lid.
Cover the jar with an other box and the lid.
Reduce size of entrance
to prevent robbing.
Watching the bees come and go is interesting.
Check to see how many eggs she lays ,
the pattern(should to full not patchy)
How the brood is hatching.
The queen may get fatter and slower moving ,
if she is not already.
The bees collect pollen on the back of their legs to feed them selves,
bring in nectar from the flowers.
Some times the line up at the entrance like soldiers.
cute
Breeding queens
Jenter Kit
 
Queen is caught and put in jenter kit.
The kit frame is placed in hive until eggs are laid in cells.
The queen is released.
The eggs are put into cups.
 
This is done in a warm place like a pickup truck.
Cups in a frame.
The frame with eggs is put in breeding colony to care for eggs.
Queen cell are developed, and added to queen less colonies.
Natural Cell Rearing
Selection of Cells
The colonies do make queen cells them selves of course.
These girls have really made a lot of really nice cells.
More than usual
.
The ideal is to leave the nicest, larges one for the colony to raise.
It seems a shame to take them off.
When the first queen is hatched she goes about killing the other cells.
Some times she is not the superior queen just the first hatched.
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