Please order separately from Equipment & Queens.

IF YOU ARE LOOKING TO PURCHASE A COLLECTED NUC PLEASE VIEW OUR COLLECTED NUC PRODUCT PAGE HERE

5 Frame Nucleus supplied with a family of Buckfast bees headed by a newly open mated, unclipped & marked 2025 (Blue) Buckfast queen to begin supply May 2025* onward (Weather Permitting*).

An ideal way to start beekeeping is to purchase a Nuc and with our docile bees it is perfect for beginners whilst still maintaining required traits for production, disease resistance and low swarming tendencies.

Your Nuc will be supplied to you with brood at all stages (capped brood, larvae, and eggs) and a sufficient amount of stores**. All of our nucs are made early in the season with the queen supplied allowing them to build up themselves. These are NOT thrown together last minute with a caged queen like many other suppliers.

All our breeding hives are treated for varroa routinely with approved VMD medication of which is recorded and kept for 5 years under VMR 2011SI2159, we are also fully DASH accredited suppliers so you can rest assured your bees will be in prime condition on arrival.

Our nucs are supplied on British Standard DN4 National frames (Hoffman spacing 432mm x 356mm) which are suitable for a National Hive & WBC, inside our own bespoke free correx travel box.

Please note these will fit inside of a 14x12 hive but you will have to slowly migrate to your larger frame size. Unfortunately it is not commercially viable for us to produce on several different frame sizes. You can use these in a Langstroth hive (e.g. Flow Hive) by using cable ties to secure a national frame to the top and side bars of a standard Langstroth frame with the bottom bars removed but entirely at your own risk, see Flow Forum guide here.

Please select the most appropriate date for yourself when placing your order. Please be aware this date cannot be changed in our system once the order is placed.

PAYMENT FOR POSTED NUCS IS THE FULL PRICE OF £280 PLUS POST – INCLUDING A NON REFUNDABLE £80 DEPOSIT.
MAIN LAND UK NEXT DAY BEFORE 1PM POSTAGE PRICES - Please note that postage is at your own risk, we always recommend you collect.

Nuc Postage - £30 per Nuc (Via Royal Mail Special Delivery before 1pm*) *Certain postcodes are excluded from the 1pm guarantee, see Royal Mail website.
Prices quoted are for UK only - we do not post overseas or to Ireland.

We ONLY use Royal Mail to post Bees as they are the only courier that manually handle each consignment. Not only do they not use conveyor belts they are the only courier legally that can carry live insects. Be wary of suppliers offering via other couriers as they will likely be handled badly on conveyer systems.

We accept the following payment options – Debit / Credit Card (via Trust Payments), Paypal, Instant Bank Transfer and Cheque

Once your order has been placed you will receive a confirmation email of your order and payment. Only when your deposit is received your order is secured. Our first point of contact will be via email so please be sure to enter a valid email address so we can invite you to book into our delivery dispatch system. If we do not receive a response via email your Nuc will be offered to the next customer in the queue - unfortunately we just do not have the resources to chase customers consistently. We will contact you to make arrangements when we know your bees are ready and aim to supply during your selected allocation week but as we are unable to control the weather an allowance of +/- 1-2 weeks must be accounted for as a contingency.

POSTAGE - Due to the time constraints we are under in the spring we can only offer postage dispatches on Wednesdays (for Thursday arrival, unless explicitly agreed before hand). We specifically dedicate Wednesdays to postage due to the amount of logistics behind the scenes required for bulk postage of Nucs. We are able to defer your dispatch to the following 2 weeks unless you are at the end of the order list (generally July). We are unable to delay dispatches further than this otherwise they will require additional management to prevent swarming. Any additional delays will be charged a hive management fee of £20 + VAT per week.

*All quoted dates are provisional based on conditions and allowance of +/- 1-2 weeks must be accounted for. We cannot control the weather so please bear that in mind when placing your order. Any updates can be seen on our News & Updates section.

** Please note - depending on the time of year stores may vary, e.g. during April / May there is a strong flow of oil seed rape so a larger amount of honey could be expected. Nucs will initially benefit from feeding to establish into a stronger colony when moved into a full size box as demonstrated in our installation video.

Queens used in our nucs are imported from Europe from reputable breeders.