Queen Bee Mating Nuc Box "Rainbow Heron" handmade.

• Queen Bee Mating Nuc Box "Rainbow Heron" is designed to mating flight.

• Queen Bee Mating Nuc Box "Rainbow Heron" is also intended for short-term (about 1 month) keeping of mated queens with 250 milliliters of bees.

This nucleus consists of the following parts:

• Core body made of polystyrene.

• Inner part made of plexiglass. Consists of one semi-circular bee frame attached to the upper aft compartment with a transparent lid.

• Metal roof.

• Metal retainer for the body of the nucleus on the metal pole. The metal pole is fixing in the ground.

• Landing board from OSB-3

The presence or appearance of small cracks on the transparent plexiglass part of the nuc is not a defect and does not affect the functionality of the nuc in any way. Wash the nucleus with warm water. Do not expose to sudden changes in temperature. Do not expose to severe frosts in winter.

The hull of the nuc and landing board are painted in various colors, including those colors that are clearly distinguishable by bees. The inner part of the nucleus is treated with propolis for comfortable keeping of bees.

The capacity of this nucleus is 250 milliliters of bees (not to be confused with grams!). This number of bees is calculated for the following weather conditions: daytime temperature in the range of 20 to 29 degrees Celsius, moderately sunny weather with a little intermittent rains and moderate wind, night temperatures 12-15 degrees Celsius. The round vent on the back of the hive must be fully open in this case.

If the forecast weather conditions differ from those indicated above, then the number of bees to be placed in the nucleus should be adjusted up or down, depending on weather conditions and air temperature.

The microclimate inside the nucleus can also be regulated using a round metal damper located on the back of the nucleus body.

The round entrance gate is made of metal. The normal position of the entrance gate is always closed for the passage of the queen bee and open for the passage of worker bees, except for the following two cases:

• When a new colony is exposed for the first time from a dark basement to the open air in the evening, it is possible to fully open the gate for 30 minutes in order for the bees to fly.

• When the virgin queen comes out for mating flight during drone flight hours, the entrance gate is also opened for the passage of the virgin queen. For example, you can open the entrance gate in sunny weather at noon and close the entrance gate for the queen bee after two or three hours. The rest of the time the queen bee should not be able to leave the nucleus.

As soon as the first eggs appears on the honeycomb frame, the entrance gate must always work only in the mode for the passage of worker bees.

Bee colonies with a size of 250 milliliters of bees are not viable without outside help. In other words, they cannot provide themselves with sufficient food. Therefore, there should always be a candy in the aft compartment. Candy may be hard, or may be more plastic than usual.

Also, regular work with the Queen Bee Mating Nuc Box "Rainbow Heron" includes periodic inspections of the bee frame, the current state of the brood, bees and the queen, the presence of food reserves in the comb. Care must be taken when opening the nucleus, as bees can make additional combs on the side walls of the nucleus. Such combs must be removed regularly.

It should be noted that there are many nuances and subtleties of keeping such small colonies of bees. For example, if there is an apiary with large honey beehives nearby, then you need to protect the nucs from robbing. But in my personal experience, my nuclei have never been attacked by bees from large hives. This never happened even in the period free of honey harvesting.

The main disadvantage of keeping colonies of bees with only 250 milliliters of bees is that such colonies can easily fly away from the nuc. This can happen even when the queen has started laying eggs. Therefore, such colonies require very careful daily and even hourly monitoring.

Bees can fly away from their nucleus if they are too hot or too cold. For example, this can happen in the early days when the nucs have been moved to permanent locations in the apiary. At this time, the colonies in the nuclei are still fragile, the bees still do not quite feel that they are one colony.

"Intra-family" ties are still quite weak.

For this reason, it happens that the bees, flying out, do not return to their own nucleus, but to another, in which there are more bees. As a result, there are too many bees in this nucleus, they become crowded and hot, and they fly away. Moreover, they can take bees from other nucleuses with them. Of course, if the queen bee cannot leave the nuc, then they will not fly away. But what if the bee queen is virgin and needs to fly?! Therefore, it is better to prevent such a situation than to think later what can be done. Therefore, I pay great attention to the distance between adjacent nucs and put them at a distance of at least 6 meters from one another.

Unfortunately, keeping bees in small nucs requires a high level of beekeeper skill, requires an understanding of the biology of the bee colony. Such an understanding comes only with experience, and experience is always based on many annoying mistakes ...

But, as they say, "no pain, no gain."

On the other hand, nucs with such a small number of bees are simply indispensable for the economical breeding of mated queen bees and the rapid increase in the number of colonies in the apiary. For example, in order to populate the 30 Queen Bee Mating Nuc Boxes "Rainbow Heron" I need to take young worker bees from only two medium-sized bee colonies! And since in the summer the young bee makes up about half of the population of the hive, then for the obtaining of 30 bee mated queens, only that number of bees is required, which is equal to the population of one hive! But the truth is, the bees must be young.

Moreover, after the queens has become mated, the beekeeper has at least 4 weeks to have time to form new bee colonies for these queens.

And this, you see, is very convenient. And very exciting and very interesting.

Beekeeper Alexey.