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Some Uses for a 2 Frame Nuc

Queen mating - If a 2 frame nuc is made up early in the season, in West Sussex I can often get 3-4 queens mated in the same colony during the summer, although this will probably be reduced the further north you are. The queens when mated can be left long enough to make sure they are laying O.K. before introducing them to another colony. Once the queens have been removed, another queen cell can be inserted and by the time she is laying there is room for her to do so, because the brood from the previous queen has mostly emerged.

Honey Bee - WikiBeekeeping

These are the bees that beekeepers keep in hives, they pollinate most of our crops and help to keep the cost of food production down. They produce honey and beeswax and have been unchanged for something like 50 million years. I find them fascinating and I have been passionately fond of them for most of my life.

These are the only type of bee which forms a swarm. Unfortunately owing to poor understanding and a general lack of knowledge, this tends to frighten people. If you find a swarm, contact a local beekeeper and he or she will tell you what to do about it. You should not be alarmed, it is a natural process that helps the bees to find a new home.

This type of lid will fit both the standard and Marburg versions of the swarm box.

The material used for the main plate of this item is waterproof exterior grade plywood 9 mm in thickness. The handle parts are softwood and the handles will benefit from the edges of the slots being rounded for comfort while carrying.

Bee Diseases are unfortunately a fact of life, but many beekeepers pay scant attention to learning about disease recognition. This is a pity because we are dealing with animals and in England and Wales we have notifiable diseases that we need to be able to recognise. Some teachers are paranoid about disease, probably "turning off" the very people they are trying to teach. In the past a talk on "Disease" wasn't well supported, but the modern beekeeper is much more aware of the problems that can be caused, especially varroa and the related viruses, where a colony can quickly collapse. 

Inbreeding is usually deleterious for three rather different reasons. 

1. Recessive alleles Alleles can be dominant or recessive to one another, but recessive alleles remain unexpressed in heterozygotes that also carry a dominant, i.e. recessives are expressed in females only when homozygous. They can be expressed in every normal hemizygous drone, in whom the concepts of recessivity and dominance are inapplicable, although for reasons of their function, expression of some genes is restricted to one or other sex. 

 2. Sex determination In bees, development of female anatomy and physiology is triggered in the larva by heterozygosity at a specific locus carrying the sex determining gene, i.e. by the presence of two different sex determining alleles. By contrast, an embryo develops as male when only one kind of sex determining allele is present. This occurs normally in unfertilised eggs, described as "haploid", meaning having only one set of chromosomes. It can however also arise in fertilised eggs (described as "diploid", meaning that they carry two sets of chromosomes) if they are homozygous at the sex gene locus. 

Grafting is the most common method of queen rearing and is used worldwide. To the best of my knowledge it is used by most of the commercial queen breeders, presumably because it is quick, cheap and reliable. 

 Grafting is simply the transfer of larvae that were intended to be workers into queen cell cups. In my view it should be termed "Larval Transfer" because that is a more accurate description, but I will continue to refer to it as grafting to avoid changing terminology. 

Alternative Lid

This type of lid will fit both the standard and Marburg versions of the swarm box.

A hybrid is simply a cross between two pure races, a mongrel is where at least one parent is cross bred. In many instances I think the word "hybrid" is misused, probably because "mongrel" is seen as derogatory - it probably helps sales as well!

It is reasonable to assume the pioneer honey bees would have needed three things:-

One method that appeals to me is the artificial swarm. This can be performed without the colony making preparations to swarm. It is only a slight modification from a manipulation that many beekeepers are familiar with, so there is not much more to learn.

I have heard it said by speakers on queen rearing and bee breeding that the colour of bees in a colony isn't important, but I disagree. To my way of thinking you won't get consistent bees if the colours vary, because it shows mixed parentage. I believe this is one reason why many of the colonies in the U.K. are so inconsistant in behaviour and performance.

I have to admit to liking dark bees of the native type, as they suit the kind of management system I have developed. For that reason I have described below what I do. In general I find yellow bees are more prolific and I struggle to keep them in single brood box national hives. If you like yellow bees, I haven't a problem with that, but what I say you will have to substitute yellow for black.

Caucasian Honey Bees (Apis mellifera caucasica) originated in the mountain range and valleys of the Caucasus. The climate varies considerably and the local strains have adapted to suit.

Caucasians have the reputation for having the longest tongues of the Western honey bee sub-species, but it doesn't seem to have given the bees much benefit. They are also reputed to be great collectors and users of propolis. Bearing in mind the recent discoveries about heavy propolis collectors being healthier, Caucasians are said to have poor resistance to nosema (probably N apis), although accounts vary.

These are few types of Grafting Tools used for Transferring Honey Bee Larvae.

Swiss Type - This is an expensive precision instrument! It works alright, but it is not as easy to use as some of the others and represents poor value for money.

Magnified Swiss Type - A magnifying glass is fitted to the stem of this tool to enable those with less than perfect eyesight to see more easily. I find this rather clumsy and unwieldy.

Honey bee colonies in hives live in both darkness inside their hives and in light when they are out foraging.