I'll not go into all the details again, as they were described last year. But, one means of creating some nucs is to stick them in a tower above the mother box (and indeed the mother). What are the advantages? Less space. Doesn't use additional floors and roofs or nuc boxes. Some warmth to the nucs on top (can enhance this by fitting mesh over holes in the board separating the boxes). Failed ones are simply fused by removing a divider. When you disassemble the stack the bees ...
Well, I think my Nuc has gone from virgin queen to swarmed in about 6 days. I will admit to placing a test frame in it last thursday, I'm also absolutely adamant that this frame had no queen cells on it as it came out of the 14x12 and was on standby in case the 14x12 was showing signs of trying to swarm again so I could get the queen out into another Nuc (my Nucs are standard National at the moment) so it'd already been checked once to ensure it had no queen cells on it and I checked ...
Updated 04-06-2010 at 12:03 PM by Neils
I released the queen I had left in a roller cage overnight. The two colonies seemed to combine without fighting. In theory, a queenless colony should look on an introduced queen as a gift from above but you never know with bees. I removed the roller cage and then a frame from the nuc. I placed the frame on its side and set the roller cage onto it, releasing the plug. You can see the queen leaving and the bees immediately starting to groom her. Sometimes ...
Updated 21-03-2010 at 08:26 PM by Jon