Made in Germany, this tiny nuc is simple to use, fewer bees are required, complete with adjustable entrance, vents and embossed frames.

Once queen cells have been raised, the virgins have to be mated. This has traditionally been done by making up a nucleus, with full size frames, for each queen, effectively taking a lot of bees out of honey production, just to support one queen. Modern plastics, and a different approach to creating a mini colony, have given us the mini-nuc, which uses only a cupful of bees at a time. Not only that, but each mini-nuc can look after a number of queens in succession.