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. We do have a limited amount of Langstroth Nucs available in April here.
| Availability Timescale | Provisional Delivery Date |
| 1st Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 15th May 2025 |
| 2nd Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 22nd May 2025 |
| 3rd Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 29th May 2025 |
| 4th Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 5th June 2025 |
| 5th Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 12th June 2025 |
| 6th Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 19th June 2025 |
| 7th Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 26th June 2025 |
| 8th Round (+/- 1-2 weeks) | 3rd July 2025 |
| FINAL ROUND (STRAGGLERS) | 10th July 2025 |
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.
*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.
