Glossary

A brief summary of some common beekeeping terms and what they mean

This page is not only not finished, it’s barely started.

I get asked a lot of “what does this mean” questions about beekeeping, this is my attempt to build a glossary of some of the more commonly used terms.

BBKA

BBKA is the British Beekeepers Association

Demaree

The Demaree method of swarm control, sometimes called a vertical split.
It works by moving the brood and eggs above the supers with the queen in the bottom brood box with empty drawn comb or foundation.

There’s a more detailed description of the Demaree method on the Barnsley Beekeepers website

Nuc

Short for nucleus, a small colony of bees. A standard British National beehive will have 11 or 12 frames in it, a nuc will have 5 or 6. Typically people will start of in beekeeping by buying a nuc and then letting it grow into a full-sized colony.