Tip: Have you ever made a nuc up, kept in the same apiary, only to find that most of the bees had returned to their home hive?

Have you ever made up a nuc that was kept in the same apiary, only to find that most of the bees had flown home, leaving your nuc short of nurse bees? I have! I remedied this by setting up a ramp to the front of the nuc, as in a Taranov swarm method. Remove two or three frames (from the same hive from which the nuc was made from) of open brood, these will have a high proportion of nurse bees, shake the bees from these frames onto the ramp that you have set up. The nurse bees, having not flown from their hive, will have no idea of where home is and will move upwards towards the nuc entrance. Field bees however will fly back to their home hive before entering the nuc.

I haven't done this yet but I see no reason why this method could not be used to make drone free nucs up for selective breeding. By placing a queen excluder between the floor and brood box any drones shaken from the frames would be prevented from entering the nuc. Indeed any queen shaken from the frames would also be prevented entry, something that can happen when making up nucleus colonies. Once the nurse bees have settled inside, the floor and queen excluder are removed, cleared of bees and the floor returned to the nuc with the entrance sealed. Poly nucs can have an entrance disc fitted that has a queen excluder function, this should work too but would take longer for the bees to enter, the effective entrance being that much smaller.