Bee Nucs Frequently Asked Questions

All nucs orders should be placed through our website. We take a £50 deposit to secure your order. We will then email you in Jan/Feb/Mar to provide detials on how you can pay your outstanding balance.

When the nucleus arrives, there will be a QR code on the box which you scan that takes you directly to your installation instructiions. We also send an email in advance detailing these steps so you can prepate for the arrival of your nucleus colony. We have a dedicated webpage for nucleus installation which shows all of the steps required. There is also a video showing you how to do it. If you have any questions at all, please contact us via the website and we will be more than happy to answer any questions. https://www.blackmountainhoney.co.uk/how-to-look-after-bees

Yes. Laurence Edwards is a fully qualified and registerd DASH inspection. (Disease Assurance Scheme for Honey Bees).

Unfortunately for nucs, we are unable to offer delivery at the weekend due to risk of delayed delivery.

Yes. All of our queens are marked with the corresponding colour for the year of mating.

Unfortunately, due to the risk of disease, we cannot accept any poly boxes back into our apiaries. They sell well on FB if you no longer need them, but they are a very useful item around the apiary. Perfect for making your own splits.

No. Are queens are not clipped and we do not offer a queen clipping service.

We recommend bringing two items when collecting. Some wooden battens to lift the nuc from the base of the car and a small water sprayer to help the bees stay cool in transit. You don’t need a beesuit, gloves etc

We do not guarantee the time or date of delivery. Even though we use a ‘guaranteed’ delivery service, we don’t provide any refunds or rebates for delayed delivery. RM make it too hard to claim for this so we don’t pursue any losses.

Yes. You will receive a tracking code the day before the nuc is due to be delivered. (ROYAL MAIL)

When you order a nuc, you will receive an email confirmation of order (check spam/promotions). Around Feb/March we will be in touch to collect your outstanding payments and agree a date for the delivery of your nucs (weather dependent). On the day of dispatch around 4pm, we will send you a dispatch notification with tracking code. You will also at this point receive an email/text from Royal Mail advising of the day of the delivery (next day). On the morning of delivery, you will receive a 1hr timeslot from Royal Mail for delivery. You must be at home to sign for the nucs

All nucleus collections will be from Black Mountain Honey, Hendre Foilen, CH7 4EL

Yes. All nucs are treated with Apivar in August for varroa. They are also sublimated with Apibioxal in December to ensure the mite load is very low. We recommend your first treatment should be in August/September and we recommend using Apivar

We guarantee the nuc will arrive alive and in good conditon. If the colony arrives dead, we will replace it free of charge. It should be noted, our faikure rate for nucs is below 0.05%. We do not guarantee the time or date of delivery. Even though we use a ‘guaranteed’ delivery service, we don’t provide any refunds or rebates for delayed delivery. RM make it too hard to claim for this so we don’t pursue any losses.

Yes. Our Langstroth nucs are designed to fit perfectly into a Flow Hive

Unfortunately, due to the number of colonies being collected and the unsuitable location, you cannot inspect your bees prior to inspection - but you can see our bees on our YouTube channel.

Yes. Someone will need to be home to sign for the nuc. We are unable to send nucs on any service that doesn’t require a signature.

Yes. All of our nucs include FREE UK Special Delivery via Royal Mail. The nucs are collected from us at 530pm and travel directly to the Chester sorting office (bypassing the local office). They are then sent UK wide and are delivered before 1pm the following day.

We offer free postage on all of our nucs. They are £350 each inc free UK Special Delivery before 1pm with Royal Mail

Our nucs are produced to order with very little float in the numbers available. The £50 deposit for the nucs is non refundable. We are able to move the dates around and carry over to the following year if required.

Our overwintered nucs are made using UK mated queens from our welsh apiaries. They arrive around 4-6 weeks earlier than our spring nucs. They contain a queen from the previous season that has overwintered in the UK. The spring nucs are made up early in the season using top quality, imported queens. They contain a queen that was mated in the current year. In terms of quality, they are identical and they both arrive on 6 frames in a Paynes ventilated poly nuc.

We send our overwintered nucs between March-June each year. Our Spring nucs are sent between May - July. Our nucs sell out well in advance every year so we take deposits between Aug-April.

We take a deposit to secure the order for the season to help with planning and preperation. We will purchase equipment such as nuc boxes, frames, queens, wax etc based on the current orders. Bees are produced to order, in the past where we have taken orders in good faith we have been let down. Cancellation not only wastes our resources but time may have already been set aside producing your order.

Included in your nucleus colony are the following: 1 x mated and marked queen bees. 3-4 frames of brood. 1-2 frame of stores. 6 frames of bees in total. 1 x paynes poly nuc with ventilated screen.

Yes. All of our queens are mated and pass a variety of stringent tests prior to sending to our customers.

You must be at home to sign for your nucs on the first attempt to qualify for our live arrival guarantee. If you miss the delivery, the nucs will be delivered automatically the following day. Nucs can survive in the post in excellent condition for many days and 99% of the time, they arrive the next day in perfect condition.

Yes. We offer collection for our nucs. We generally have collection days on Saturdays throughout April and May. If you select collection, we will be in touch to agree a suitable date and time for collection.

Our nucs are produced by us here in the UK. The queens are also mated in the UK and overwintered in the UK.

We sell standard national and Langstroth nucs. Both of these are sent in a Paynes poly nuc with a ventilated screen. We do not sell 14 x 12, commercial, dadant, top bar nucs.

No. We send emails and texts to confirm when your bees will be delivered. Please keep an eye on your emails. We will call you if you do not respond to our emails :)

Introduction In 2010 - 2011 the Farming Regulation Task Force issued an Earned Recognition Plan which, as the title suggests, allows self-regulation to those who show a strong track record of reliability and adherence to standards. This risk-based approach to inspections already runs throughout a number of inspection regimes, e.g. Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) inspections in the pig and poultry sectors, and in livestock welfare and dairy hygiene inspections. In 2013, the National Bee Unit (NBU) and The Bee Farmers’ Association Ltd (BFA) collaborated to develop DASH – the Disease Accreditation Scheme for Honeybees. The aim of DASH is to: Reduce the costs associated with disease within commercial beekeeping operations; Improve the health of honeybees within the operation, and Reduce the regulatory burden in the form of inspection visits. DASH is recognised within the DEFRA Farming Regulation Task Force Implementation – Earned Recognition Plan August 2013. DASH is only eligible to those in the Bee Farming industry and those members that successfully complete the scheme will receive greater autonomy and fewer inspections by Bee Inspectors. This will not necessarily mean a reduction in the total number of inspections, but rather gives an opportunity to improve targeting inspections to those close to disease. Overview of DASH During the late summer months, participants will need to attend a training event to verify that they can recognise disease; In the winter, successful candidates will be expected to update their apiary sites and colony numbers on BeeBase; The following Inspection season, the NBU will then carry out baseline inspections of all colonies. Once this is complete, improvement orders will be issued if necessary, followed by a certificate of competency; From then on Bee Farmers will be required to self-report any disease finds to the NBU as required in the working protocol. Any equipment needed for diagnosis of suspect disease will be provided by the NBU; Members will receive audit visits by Bee Inspectors. Any audit visit which involves ‘Inspection Activity’ still has to be risk based and must fall in line with our operating to the Regulators Compliance Code. There will be no Inspection Activity without a reason

Overwintered nucs are ready between Mar-May. Spring Nucs are ready between May-July. We do not send any nucs after July.

We generally sell out between November and January each year. We take a £50 deposit to secure your nucleus and we advise ordering as early as possible. Nucs will be dispatched in priority order. The earlier your order, the earlier we will delivery your nucs.

We do not guarantee the time or date of delivery. Even though we use a ‘guaranteed’ delivery service, we don’t provide any refunds or rebates for delayed delivery. RM make it too hard to claim for this so we don’t pursue any losses. However, the nucs are very resilient in the postal service and can survive for a good few days in excellent condition. Where delivery fails, RM will automatically attempt to deliver again the following day.

All of our honey is produced by bee farmers within the UK. We never import honey and all honey comes from our own bees (Laurence Edwards and Richard Stevens).

We sell 8 different types of honey. Wildflower, soft set, borage, heather, heather blend, set borage, natural set and section combs.

Yes. We sell honey in bulk. Please visit our wholesale page

We sell honey in various shops throughout Flintshire and Wales. We also sell directly from our website

Included in our gift sets is a pack of wildflower seeds, birch wooden honey dipper, a6 info card and of course, our award winning honey.

Yes. We sell honey in bulk. Please visit our wholesale page

Postage on all honey products is free within the UK

Yes. We have a 5 star hygiene rating and a level 2 in Food and Drink Manufacturing.

We send all honey orders using RM tracked 48 hr service. You don’t need to be in to sign for your honey and RM will leave in a safe place. The honey is fully tracked and will receive tracking messages from RM

Our honey comes in 227g glass jars with metal lids. Both of these are recyclable. All of our packaging is 100% compostable at home. We only use materials that can be composted or recyclable. We don't use any single use plastics in our honey packaging.

Yes. Our website is hosted by WIX. One of the largest hosting services in the world. It is fully secure. You will see the padlock symbol in the top right hand corner.

Its much faster to order through the website but if you are struggling we can take orders over the phone

Due to Brexit, we are only able to send nucs/queens/honey within the UK

You can contact us by phone, email, text or Whatsapp

We accept credit card/apple pay/google pay/bank transfer. We do not accept Paypal or cheques.

We are based from our home and we do not have a shop that you can visit. We are a 100% online business.

There is no need as a nucleus already contains a queen. If you are ordering them seperately it’s the same price to order them seperately and this makes our lives much easier. Please order seperately if you can.

The best phone number to contact us is 07886 628 219. If we don’t answer or your call drops. Please text us and we will get back to you ASAP

We are located in North Wales. Collection of our nucs is from Hendre Foilen. Ch7 4el. We do not have a shop you are unable to visit our premises which is just our house

We are FT bee farmers so our hands are often sticky or covered in bees. We will try to answer when we can but we will respond to texts and emails as soon as we possibly can.

All orders should be placed via the website. If you are struggling, we can take orders over the phone.

When ordering queens you are given the option to select a day of dispatch. This is the day we send the queen and will arrive the following day before 1pm. We advise people to use this option where possible. You can order for dispatch on a specific day, up to 3 months ahead of delivery. If your preferred date isn’t available, you can select Next Day Delivery. If you select this option before 4pm, we will dispatch on the same day, for Next Day Delivery. As Soon As Available option is our flexible option. We will send your queens as soon as they arrive with us and notify when you they are likely to be delivered.

Our queens generally sell out before they arrive with us but we do very occasionally send out discount codes to our mailing list. Sign up HERE.

Our F1 Buckfast queens are generally available between April and September. Our UK mated F1 Buckfast queens are available from June – August.

Yes. When the queens are out of season, we allow pre-orders to be made. This reserves your queens and ensures you are top of the priority list for early dispatch?

Yes. We offer various bulk discounts on our queens. Please see the product page.

If the queens are in stock, you can order up to 4pm Monday to Friday. Orders received before 4pm on Monday-Friday will be dispatched the same day and will arrive the following day before 1pm

The UK F1 Buckfast queens are more expensive as they are considerably more time consuming and resource intensive to produce. We are at the mercy of the UK weather and will only sell queens that pass our stringent quality tests.

If you cancel an order, we incur a 4% processing fee for the total value of your order. We understand things change and we will do our best to accommodate any changes you need to make. If you wish to cancel, we will apply a £5 cancellation charge to your order.

Unfortunately, we are only able to send queens in the UK through Royal Mail. They are the only courier licenced to carry live insects. We use their Special Delivery service which means the queens are sent on a Next Day Delivery service. This is the fastest service available from Royal Mail. We have tried using their cheaper services such as RM24 but they are not reliable and we don’t believe its fair to subject the bees to an extended transit in the post.

If your introduction failed then please evaluate what went wrong. If you wish to call or email us, please get in contact. It is highly likely there is a virgin queen in your hive that killed the mated queen. You need to find and kill any virgins in the hive before attempting to introduce another queen.

We don’t recommend storing or banking queens. If you do need to store them in the short term, keep them in a cool, dark environment and give them a drop of water on the cage every 6 hours.

It can take the queen up to 3 weeks after leaving the cage to start laying eggs. If the queen isn’t laying eggs after 3 weeks from leaving the cage, we will provide a replacement. You must return the faulty queen back to us prior to us sending a replacement

Full details on how to introduce your queen is available by scanning the QR code on your mailing packet. You can also check out our dedicated page on how to introduce a queen which has a video showing the process. SEE HERE. https://www.blackmountainhoney.co.uk/how-to-requeen-a-beehive

Queens should be introduced as soon as practically possible after delivery.

There are many reasons to requeen a colony of bees. Check out our dedicated webpage and video. https://www.blackmountainhoney.co.uk/reasons-to-requeen-a-beehive

No. There is absolutely no need to remove the attendants. It can only cause issues. We do not recommend it.

Unfortunately, live queen introduction isn’t guaranteed. There are many variables in play which can impact the introduction process and result in a failed introduction. All of these factors are outside of our control. We are unable to hold any liability for failed introductions and we do not send replacement queens for failed introductions.

Yes. You will receive a tracking code the day before the queen is due to be delivered.

Yes. We offer delivery on a Saturday only. For Saturday delivery, please select the corresponding Friday as the day of dispatch. There is no increased charge for Saturday delivery. Saturday deliveries can be delivered at any point throughout the day. RM can deliver up to 7pm in the evening.

We do not guarantee the time or date of delivery. Even though we use a ‘guaranteed’ delivery service, we don’t provide any refunds or rebates for delayed delivery. RM make it too hard to claim for this so we don’t pursue any losses. However, the queens are very resilient in the postal service and can survive for a good few days in excellent condition. Where delivery fails, RM will automatically attempt to deliver again the following day.

We do not guarantee the time or date of delivery. Even though we use a ‘guaranteed’ delivery service, we don’t provide any refunds or rebates for delayed delivery. RM make it too hard to claim for this so we don’t pursue any losses.

We offer a Live Arrival guarantee. If your queen arrives dead. Please take a video of the dead queen in her cage (don’t open the cage) next to the delivery packing note. We will send you a replacement queen as soon as practically possible. Please note – without video evidence of the dead queen in the (unopened) cage, set against the mailing card showing your name and address, we are unable to take any liability to queens that arrive dead on arrival. Please email all videos to blackmountainhoney@gmail.com

We guarantee the queen will arrive alive. If she arrives dead, we will replace her free of charge. We do not guarantee the time or date of delivery. Even though we use a ‘guaranteed’ delivery service, we don’t provide any refunds or rebates for delayed delivery. RM make it too hard to claim for this so we don’t pursue any losses.

When you order a queen, you will receive an email confirmation of order (check spam/promotions). On the day of dispatch around 4pm, we will send you a dispatch notification with tracking code. You will also at this point receive an email/text from Royal Mail advising of the day of the delivery (next day). On the morning of delivery, you will receive a 1hr timeslot from Royal Mail for delivery. You must be at home to sign for the queens.

Unfortunately, as we are generally out in the day working the bees, we are unable to offer a collection service. On larger orders, we can arrange collection by appointment only. Please email blackmountainhoney@gmail.com

You must be at home to sign for your queens on the first attempt to qualify for our live arrival guarantee. If you miss the delivery, the queens will be delivered automatically the following day. Queens can survive in the post in excellent condition for many days and 99% of the time, they arrive the next day in perfect condition.

Yes. Someone will need to be home to sign for the queen. We are unable to send queens on any service that doesn’t require a signature.

Our queens are sent in a perforated cardboard mailing packet. We find these offer the best compromise between protection against knocks and ventilation. Our mailing cards include a QR code which you can scan to see how to introduce your queens.

Our queens are sent in a travel cage that doubles an introduction cage. These are the cages that we use to introduce our own queens.

The queen is able to fit through the larger of the two fondant tabs but occasionally they are reluctant to leave. First, ensure the bees have eaten through all of the fondant. The queen cannot leave until the fondant has been eaten. If the fondant is entirely removed and the queen still wont leave after being open for 48 hrs, then submerge the entire cage (with queen inside) in a glass of water. This will wet the queens wings and ensure she cannot fly off. You can then safely open the cage and let the queen walk into the hive (SEE VIDEO).