Getting colonies sorted today for a sale I made, so while in the back yard I checked on the nucleus colonies I have been building up over the past few months.

Nucleus 1 is now covering 4 frames and has 2 frames with brood on both sides, a total coverage of about 1.5 FD frames. 

This is excellent and the colony is heading in the right direction. By the end of August I reckon I will be moving them over to a 10 frame box.

Nucleus 2 has done extremely well and today was used to make up a larger colony with the addition of Bees and brood frames from a very strong 2 box colony ( it had Drones in Drone cells and 6 frames of capped worker brood).

Another Nucleus colony that has been part of the experiment was used to requeen a queenless colony. This was done with newspaper over the bottom queenless colony then a queen excluder. The plan is to have the two colonies combine but give the queen a bit of protection until they become a happy family.