A short video simply showing a beekeeper checking a mini nucleus for a fertilized honeybee queen. These mini hives, otherwise known as a Warnholz Mini Nucleus (or "Nuc"), play a vital role in rearing your own queens - especially when combined with a Jenter kit.

You put sugar syrup in one end of the nuc and a little bit of wax on each wood strip. Then you put a cupful of bees in the hive and seal them in for 48 hours in the dark. Release them early in the morning. They will build up the wax comb inside and start collecting stores of nectar & pollen.

Put a sealed queen cell in the next day, leave and do not touch for a week. Check after that time to see if the queen has emerged and possibly laying. If not leave and check again after another five days. Once you see eggs you know she has been mated.

The idea of a mini nuc is to breed queens without using large numbers of bees from the main colony. You can remove the queen and introduce her into another queenless hive and reunite the remaining bees with another hive or continue the process.

To see the beekeeper checking the hive, simply click on the video below.