Thornes Rainbow Mating Nuc Review

Someone in my Queen Rearing group suggested these as all their hives have under hive entrances and these match but they'd never actually tried them yet. I thought they were a good price in comparision to similar options. I bought two, the idea being this meant free delivery with everything else I ordered! The principle idea is that the clashing colours of the nucs mean it's easier for multiple queens to find their way home after mating. 

small and compact, my other one is blue and red I think

They arrived quickly from Thornes and they are really well constructed and really reasonably priced. They are plastic so will last a long time and easy to clean! They had different entrances on the bottom, closed, open and queen excluder. I used a paintbrush to apply melted wax to the plastic frame starter strips and then decided to make fondant for the little feeder. My fondant was a failure, I feel I just made sugar blocks but they ate them!

To 'fill' it I used bees from the super frames, I actually didn't leave them as you're meant to and ran the queen in pretty much straight away. I had the entrance closed as I thought they'd be forced to be friends and then opened it two days later so the queen could go on mating flights.

I liked how small and compact they were and the one I used the queen mated successfully and returned. I did find the queen liked to sit on the wooden crown board, maybe thats just her but just to warn others if you decide to use them- check your mini crown boards! I can't wait to use them again and highly recommend.