He placed a deposit in December and the team at Black Mountain Honey made contact with him in February to discuss the arrangements for balance payments and options for collection.
Aaron felt the communication from Laurence and the team at Black Mountain Honey was excellent and he was kept in the loop on his order progress all the way through the process.
Aaron decided to collect his nucleus colony directly from Laurence’s house in North Wales. He agreed a time for collection and arrived in his 15 minute time slot, to be greeted by Laurence.
Aaron was understandably nervous about having around 10’000 bees in his car for the ride home to Manchester but he realised he had no need to worry.
The nucleus colony was ready for collection and well packaged for the upcoming journey. The nucleus colony had ventilation on the bottom and also had a ventilated screen on top. The screen was screwed into the nucleus to ensure it couldn’t come loose during transit.
The nucleus entrance disc was also screwed shut. It was a really well packaged nucleus and there was no risk of anything going wrong during transit.
Upon arrival back home at his apiary in Manchester, Aaron followed the introduction advice that Laurence had sent him via email on the evening before collection. He placed the nucleus in his apiary and open the entrance disc to let the bees fly. They all came out of their nucleus and began orientation flights.
Aaron bought his first ever colony of bees from Black Mountain Honey
After 24 hours, Aaron carefully placed the nucleus off to one side and transferred the frames, one by one, to their new beehive. He even saw the marked queen on one the frames.
Aaron really liked that Laurence had not only given good advice on how to complete this transfer but he had also filmed a video for YouTube and sent the link before the nuc had arrived. This meant Aaron was ready to complete the task and wasn’t concerned he was doing anything wrong.
The nucleus began to grow and in the first year produced a sizeable crop of delicious wildflower honey, foraged from the canals and allotments around Manchester.
Aaron continues to support Black Mountain Honey by subscribing to channel membership on Laurence’s YouTube channel and regularly buys F1 Buckfast Queens for his other colonies.
