Ok so you have just received your nuc and are super excited. Here are a few tips and instructions on how to install it into your your hive.

Set up your hive with 5 frames worth of empty space in the middle of the hive. The bees will arrive on their own frames and you will be putting these frames into your hive. If you want to use your own frames then you can swap your frames in, slowly once the colony is fully settled in. For now use the 5 in the nuc. This is why you have bought a nuc with the correct sized frames.
Place the Nuc on top of your hive and leave alone for at least 1 hour. Your bees have been travelling and need a bit of time to chill out. Try and align the entrances so that the nuc entrance is above the hive entrance.
If the weather is bad then after the hour open the front of the nuc and walk away till the weather is better. Your bees will survive quite happily for a couple of days or a week in the nuc. Make sure that it is tied down and secure if leaving for longer than a couple of hours.
When the weather is calm and sunny, you can do the transfer.
- Always wear a bee-suit. Better to have a bee-suit that you don’t need than need one you don’t have!!!
- Open your hive and the nuc.
- You shouldn’t need any smoke. The less smoke the better.
- Carefully transfer the frames from the nuc into the centre of the hive. Try and keep the orientation of the frames and the frame order the same. This just makes the transfer less stressful on the bees. The final set-up should ideally be the exact replica of the frames in the nuc but now in the middle of your hive.
- Ignore all the flying bees they will find their way in the front entrance.
- Do not spend lots of time looking for the queen or inspecting the frames. You will have plenty of time for this later. You want the transfer to be as quick and quiet as possible. Seeing the queen is a bonus.
- If the nuc box still has loads of bees on it then have a quick look to make sure that the queen is not there, she needs to be in the hive. You can tap the upended nuc box onto the top of the open hive so that the last of the bees are in or leave it out the front and they will fly in.
- Close you hive and leave them in peace.
You should see bees on the front of the hive now fanning their wings, (bums in the air and flapping). This is their way of communicating to the flying bees that they have the entrance.
Give this hive time to settle. I personally wouldn’t inspect them for 2 weeks.
If you are installing a second nuc in a nearby hive then I would give the first an hour or so to settle before doing the second one.

Classic Mistakes.

The worst thing you can do as a beekeeper is to over mother your bees. They tolerate you they don’t like you. So Classic mistakes in my book:

Don’t open the nuc and spend 5 minutes on each frame looking for the queen. The more you hunt for the queen the more stressed you get and the more stressed your bees get. The colony is geared up to protect the queen so the stress of the move will likely mean she is hiding and not wanting to be seen. The worst scenario in this setting is for the queen to fly off. – If this happens continue with the move close the hive and give it space. Make sure that there is not a queen excluder on the front and she will likely fly back in to re-join the colony.
Once in leave them alone. Too many excited beginners will try and inspect the following day and then the day after etc. Just leave them bee. If you want to get a feel for your bees then pull up a chair and sit in front of the hive, just off to the side so you are not in the flight path and watch them. You can learn a lot about them just by watching them from a distance. This should be the joy of bee keeping.