Colony 11 arrives in a Nucleus

Colony 11 appears to be a feral colony which was forced out of a roof by building work. It was collected by a member of my bee group and put into a nucleus box. Unfortunately the colony was behaving very aggressively so she gave it up.

I collected the colony last night in its nuc' box. As I gently wheeled it on the back of my bike I could smell the alarm pheromones coming from the ventilation on the top of the box.

When I arrived at my out-apiary I moved the hive box from the stand where Hive C was positioned. I then placed the nuc' on top and went home.

This morning I awoke to fairly heavy rain. There were puddles showing that it had been raining for some time. The nuc' box is ventilated at the top so that rain can get in. I decided to move them to a hive with a roof as soon as possible.

The nuc' box does not have frames in it, so the bees are building comb which is anchored to the box. This presents a tricky problem: How do I transfer them? The lid of the box -- which the comb is fastened to -- fits across about half of a national hive body. I decided to move the roof of the nuc' into Hive C and pack the remaining space with framed comb. I took a large piece of wood which will pack the top of the hive so that it is level with the nuc' roof. Put together the hive is part nuc lid with free comb and part framed comb. I hope that the bees will prefer the framed comb. Experience has taught me that they seldom do what I hope.

I arrived at about 0530 this morning. The temperature was around 10C and it was raining steadily. The bees were not flying. I moved the nuc' off its stand; arranged the framed comb to the correct size and then lifted the lid into the hive. Some of the free comb stayed attached to the body of the nuc'. A large number of the bees stayed in the nuc' box too. I didn't try to find the Queen. I just placed the nuc' body on top of the area of framed comb, secured it with a hive strap and left them to work out what was best for them*. I'll go back later today to see what they've done. If the Queen was on the comb then I hope that they'll move down to her. If she's still in the nuc' body then I'm not sure what I'll do. The bees were seen bringing in pollen before I took the nuc' box last night, which suggests brood. She should be with the brood, which give me hope that she's inside the body of the hive rather than the nuc'.