No it’s not. Don’t be ridiculous.
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I don’t know what the answers are George. Knowing what’s good & bad while you do an inspection helps. Or while you transfer the frames into your brood box. Another good thing would be to establish what you will be getting with the nuc before placing the order.
It wont help if you tell him that blokes on a beekeeping forum reckons the comb in the frame is rubbish. You’d have to be assertive & tell him you expected better comb than what’s in that frame. You’d like to see a frame that’s basically fully drawn worker comb. Nice & evenly built, not old & doesn’t need replacing straight away. What are the other frames like?
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I suspect the condition of the comb has been impacted by reduced inspections because of the bushfires. From memory BW get their Nucs from hives kept in the SW.
I’m only guessing though…
I thought it was Rottnest.
Hi George, I sold my first nuc today to a new beek. He came yesterday and transferred the frames into his own nuc hive. He got to see what he was getting.
We left them overnight - since the transfer was in the afternoon and the foragers were still out. He came this evening, we closed up shop and he took the goods.
I blindly accepted my first hive. Given a second chance I’d welcome the opportunity to inspect before buying.
What’s the standard protocol?
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Hi @fffffred, That sound like a good idea, to have a look at the frames when they are transferred to a nuc box that the customer brings.
What’s the standard protocol?
I did not know that a protocol existed ?
Cheers, G
Hi Fred, that’s the same as what I do. I also like to show the queen if time permits. Once I spot her, I let the customer find her him/herself. It’s mostly new beekeepers I’m dealing with, therefore I point out the standard of frames that should be in the brood box. Frames like I described yesterday. People like to see emerging bees for the first time, whenever I spot them to show.
I’ve got one tip: if you position the nuc to be sold next to another hive, any returning bees that don’t make it into the customer’s nuc box will be accepted by the other colony.
I always get people to bring their brood box with enough frames to fill the box, allowing for my 4 frames. Then I pack them firm to eliminate frame wobble on the trip home.
This is what I think should be standard protocol for pick-up nucs.
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Zzz, you say “but then I do like an argument” on this thread, however you didn’t answer my questions on another thread. Basically after you told me to stop giving medical advice & that I was off-topic, you talked about the lack of moderators.
Were my question too hard to answer? You wouldn’t have missed them, seeing as only 2 topics were discussed on the day.
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@fffffred and @George_Perth Sadly there is no protocol or standard so it is a matter of trust in the seller. I sell complete hives and insist on dismantling the hive so that the buyer sees the queen and brood etc and that there is no issues, then that evening the hive is closed up with confidence both for myself and the buyer. I treat each buyer as a potential repeat customer and would only sell a hive that
I would be happy to buy myself. Some of my buyers are so new to bee keeping they haven’t seen in a hive and I prefer them to spend as much time as they need at my apiary off-siding me till they have the basics of what they are taking on.
Unfortunately some bee keepers see sell a nuc as a way of ‘flogging off’ old or bad frames, this forum can be a way of spreading the word on these ‘used car salesmen’.
Cheers
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Jeff I don’t think it is fair for other members of this forum to bore them with petty arguments on things unrelated to beekeeping. Anyway, my issue was that the tone of your comment on your other thread had a whiff of ridicule, or at least disagreement with the medical advice given to governments to limit travel of city people to the regions. There are very solid reasons for that, and I think I should trust the advice of people that dedicated their lives studying diseases and how they spread. I am not an epidemiologist, but I do have a science background.
I also asked a beekeeping question here that was ignored.
That was in relation to skeggleys comment below regarding checker boarding a new nuc.
So there you go, that’s my argument for the day.
@Zzz You will find heaps of reading about checker boarding by clicking on the magnifying glass on the top right of your screen. I think you will find all the info you need there.
wow. thanks…
Glad to bee of help.
Hold on, so we all spend a lot of time going on a tangent discussing off topic subjects, myself included, then a genuine beekeeping question gets flicked off to the “magnifying glass”?
That’s not right.
Z, I do not know the answer to be honest, and I don’t think it can be easily answered on the search box either. Sorry.
Sorry Olly, but there is a lot of valuable info with the magnifying glass so I didn’t flick it off. I don’t use checker boarding as a tool in reducing the risk of swarming as I regard it is a very short term fix for my location.
Cheers
So there are still fires burning! Sometimes it’s better to bite your tongue, you know, nothing nice to say, say nothing…
Jack is cagey about his nucs I’ve found, I was unable to get any information on them except they were Ligurian. I have heard they were SW bees though. Yes he prioritises commercial beeks, they would spend way more than us hobbyists. His gear used to be good however the last few things I bought were poor and pricey and some was returned for exchange. His reason was because it was cheap. It wasn’t.
Guilfoyles sells the Rotto bees.
Sure but let’s not confuse me with someone knowledgeable. 
Checker boarding is commonly used as a swarm prevention tool, (Walter Wright has written several good papers on it) I wouldn’t do it before the cluster is strong enough to quickly fill a missing frame in the brood chamber with festooning bees. It’s a lot of stress on a weak cluster to break up the brood nest. On a strong colony it enlarges the brood nest and relieves the congestion. During a flow in warm dry weather you could get away with it as George has on a nuc but generally a nucleus brood nest should not be broken up.
Hope this helps.
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Maybe there is no need to leave the forum George, you leaving would be a loss to the forum.
Cheers