Nucs, Early Spring

One of the overall themes of my beekeeping adventures is to increase the number of healthy, strong hives that I have. Naturally, the first place that I look is to my own hives in the Spring. After a good Winter, I like to start looking in my hives in early March and do a full breakdown of each by the third week or so (in March.) In Richmond, Virginia, healthy honey bee hives are building up at this time. By checking all of my hives, I can pretty much gauge which are the strongest and which are the weakest.

I pretty much have three categories of hives. The strongest are the ones that are most likely to swarm and they are probably going to do it early (the weather in central Virginia dictates what is early, but April 1 is a good average ‘early’ swarm.) These hives have the genetics that I want. The second type of hive is neither real strong nor weak. They have come out of Winter with a good brood nest and are building up nicely. These hives are targeted for honey production. The last kind of hive are my Weak Boys. They are unlikely to give me much honey are really just limped through the Winter. The fact that they made it through the Winter is a good sign that they have some of The Right Stuff, so I let them raise drones, but my goal for these hives is to get new genetics in them.

The first Nucs that I create are off of my strong hives. These gals are going to swarm unless I stop them. It’s a guarantee. The goal is to use this to my advantage. I try to watch these hives on a weekly basis in March. I am breaking them down completely, trying to understand exactly what they are doing at any given moment. It is actually amazing to see how fast they will spread into the upper supers in one week (even if it was chock full of honey the week before.) Once the grand lady has brood in all three chambers, I am at Go Time. I need to make these bees think that they swarmed (but not suffer the loss of 60% of the bees in a swarm.) The best way to do this is to go get their queen!

Basically, once I am certain they are in swarm mode (queen cells or even just eggs in queen cups), I comb the hive for the queen. I have sometimes had to go through the hive twice, as a hive in swarm mode has a ton of honey bees. Once I find the queen, I put her in a Nuc with a couple of frames of brood, 1 frame of honey, 1 frame of pollen and an undrawn frame of foundation (need to give them something to do.) It is imperative that I leave a frame of eggs in my main hive, so they can raise a new queen.

Then, the waiting game begins. After 3 to 4 weeks, I want to find that queen (or at least evidence of her.) If I do not, I will recombine them with their old queen. But, so far it always works. I think the fact that I take the established queen pretty much guarantees the establishment of the Nuc. The fact that I leave a big hive with eggs and no queen also ‘nearly’ guarantees that they will raise another strong queen to lead their hive. And, by taking the old queen, the bees are broken out of swarm mode. They either think she has already swarmed or they simply go into survival mode (we need ourselves a new queen! The old one is gone!) They do NOT continue on the swarm path in nearly all cases.

If I am really luckly, I will catch them building queen cells with larva in them (or capped queen cells.) This allows me to create multiple Nucs, depending on the number of cells (at least 2 cells per Nuc is my rule.)

The added benefit is that I have a proven queen (made it through the Winter and likes to raise hard working, healthy bees) in a Nuc now. I can use her eggs to create more Queens/Nucs or her brood to simply fortify an existing hive. The goal of this Nuc is certainly to create another hive, but these Early Spring Nucs have several months to build up. In the meantime, I am able to use their resources for my other bee pursuits (like putting a frame of capped brood in a swarm catcher box.)

I could (and probably will next year) sell the Nuc, if I didn’t want any other hives. A Nuc with a queen that is proven (made it through the Winter without medication) can go for a pretty penny.

If you would like to get on my Spring Nuc list, please click here and send me what you would like and how to contact you.