Brood Brothers 5 frame Nuc of bees
What is a nucleus of bees and why is it called a nucleus? Basically it is a small number of bees that are just large enough in population to help the single queen bee grow and develop the small colony into a larger colony. Beekeepers call it nucleus because of the similarities of a single cell hence the word Nuc short for Nucleus.
NUCLEUS hives or 'NUCs' are supplied as frames only, to be placed within an existing (empty) hive setup. If you are new to beekeeping this can be a nice way to ease yourself into it, as your confidence will grow as the colony size does. For others, NUCs provide an affordable way to increase hive numbers.
A lot of people like buying a Nuc as it is an affordable way of getting into beekeeping compared to a full 10 frame colony. A Nuc just takes longer to grow to a full colony relative to a 10 frame colony. A 5 frame Nuc generally has about 5,000 bees compared to a 10 frame colony which has anywhere between 20,000 bees to 30,000.
If you wish to buy a Nuc please remember you need your own equipment which is a starter hive, we recommend going to www.ceracell.co.nz and searching starter hive, find a hive you like and we will transfer the 5 frame of bees into your starter hive and there you have it, a new colony perfect for you to start. If you wish to buy a colony in a 5 frame wooden box, will cost $80 on top of the current retail price.
Nucs are not available year-round, we will need you to order and they will be ready end of October early November. A lot of Hobbyists tend to want bees right away, the season of August, September, and early to mid-October bees are busy building their colonies up out of Winter. So in order for us to make Nuc's we need our original colonies to grow in order for us to split the colonies, so it is simply a scheduling thing for us beekeepers.
Nucs are hard to ship so we can only cater to people between Taupo to Kaeo in Northland, what we do is we generally meet people at service stations and transfer the bees over to you at a meet location. I generally meet people from Northland in Warkworth and people from Waikato, Tauranga, and Taranaki in Hamilton. Courier companies do not like handling bees, and when we transport them I know they will survive when I hand them over to you.
Rego number is A8772