There is a growing need for additional honeybee colonies to satisfy the demand for pollination services and compensate for high colony mortality through bush burning, vandalization and pesticide poisoning. This study evaluates the preference of different nucleus hive to the establishment of colony and how to mitigate the associated pests and diseases in the practice. This was carried out in the forest (7.50oN, 4.52 oE) and savanna (8.98 o N, 7.19 o E) agroecological zones of Nigeria. The experiment at the two locations was layout using Randomized Complete Design (RCBD), data collected were analyzed using SPSS Version 22.Number of incoming bees that clearly show the strength of the colony was higher in wooden hive with 36.31/min, bamboo 33.40/min and 27.29/min in carton, followed by wooden and the least was in carton colony weight, brood length, incidence of pest and infestation of diseases as well as colony abscondment rate at week intervals. A total number of 24 nucleus hives made from different low-cost model of materials were deployed in the two agroecological zones. The result shows that the bamboo and the wooden hives gave similar result while carton were significantly different from the two hives model earlier mentioned. The findings from this study portrayed that bee farmers in Nigeria can adopt the use of low-cost materials of bamboo and carton to raise nucleus hives for establishment of colony in modern beekeeping practice.

Keywords : Colony Establishment, Bamboo Carton and Wooden nuc Hives, Pests, Diseases.