Nucs for sale, ready to go anytime

[Bill]

We are near Alford in Aberdeenshire and have nucs ready to go anytime now,
email brh18510@aol.com or call 019755 81239
thanks
Bill and Rosemary.

[Calum]

Who in their right mind buys a nuc at this time of year?
they'd have to be very cheap....
No garuntee they'll over winter, still have to be winter fed and varroa treated.
Better buy in April even if it costs more.

[Trog]

Nucs are not usually available in April. Here on Mull a July nuc will usually build up just fine in time for winter. We overwintered 3 small ones and by April two of them were too big to be sold as nucs. By May they were supered up with two supers on one of them. Out of interest, the two that built up so fast were overwintered in a twinstock. The nuc in a full-size hive with dummy boards and polystyrene was a little slower but soon got going. Mind you, we don't have varroa!

[Calum]

Hi, I'd be tarred and feathered if I sold a nuc now. In May ok, but its asking for trouble over here - especially if it dies over the winter (not the sellers fault, but you know who gets the blame).
In april ten pounds a frame twelve if there have been heavy losses!

[gavin]

The main flows in Scotland are in May for the winter oilseed rape, July for the main summer flowers (delayed a bit this year), August for those close to heather, and extending through September for those lucky enough to be close to Himalayan balsam. In some areas you need to wait for the heather for the main flow. The wintering stocks usually build on the oilseed rape (neonic-laced or not) when available and so this year's queens are not available until late May at the earliest, often June and sometimes later. For a nuc with this year's queen and 3-4 frames of sealed brood you'd be lucky to have one before late June.

There is an article in this month's Scottish Beekeeper which is also published as a technical note here (last on the list):

http://www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/PracticalBeekeeping/TechnicalDataSheets.aspx

This is some of the text on nucs:

Suffice to say that in summary a Nucleus can comprise of 3 to 5 British Standard (BS) Deep frames of bees with all stages of brood having been laid by a this year’s laying queen and sufficient food to allow them to be transported and become settled. Ideally your Nucleus should be on 5 frames. In Scotland you should avoid getting a 3 frame Nuc after the end of June, a 4 frame perhaps until mid-July. After this time the nucleus should be on 5 fully drawn frames in order to allow it time to build up sufficiently for winter. If you are on large format hives (Langstroth, British Commercial or Dadant) then the above 3, 4 & 5 BS frames can be translated to 2 up to mid-July and 3 thereafter as the frame sizes are much larger. Ideally the bees you source should be from your area as bees become acclimatised to their local environment. Use a reputable supplier and don’t be afraid to ask for references.

The advice to beginners is usually to obtain a 5-frame nuc in their first year with the intention of building it to a full box before the winter. OK, there is a risk of loss of the colony if Varroa isn't properly kept under control or the colony goes into winter without enough stores, but learning that is part of beekeeping. So, as long as folk realise that a honey crop is unlikely and that they may have to feed their nuc to get it to full size before the end of the season, there is still time.

[Trog]

Glad you said that, Gavin. I wouldn't want folk to think I was mis-selling nucs because I don't have them all ready by April!!

[gavin]

I can understand it in Germany where the forage will be (is it?!) mostly in the spring - or where people expect to have a production colony from the nuc in the same year. There are three ways to get nucs early in the season here: overwinter them, make spring splits and give them imported queens, or at the first sign of a queen cell create a nuc with the old queen and let the main colony replace its queen. None of these are really satisfactory. Better with a new queen and its own brood.

If the Bill and Rosemary are the couple I think they are, their nucs should be good.

For half of that post you can thank Phil Moss and Alan Riach, Trog!

G.

[Rosie]

I've only been releasing my nucs during the last few weeks. 2 are being collected tomorrow. The ones I plan to keep for myself are only just starting to lay but I am confident that they will be strong enough to get through the winter.

Steve

[Jon]

I had no mated queens until the end of June this year and re overwintering nucs, I overwintered 4 double apideas with queens which mated in September last year so no reason why it is too late for a nuc. I intend to make up a stack more but I will overwinter them myself rather than let a beginner take the risk at this stage.

[Bumble]

Who in their right mind buys a nuc at this time of year?

Probably somebody who hasn't been able to buy one earlier in the year. This year the weather has been more than a little difficult for beekeepers.

We bought our first colonies in the winter, from somebody who was suddenly having to sell up.

[Calum]

Glad you said that, Gavin. I wouldn't want folk to think I was mis-selling nucs because I don't have them all ready by April!!

Hi
ok when in rome,, as the saying goes. I have 26 colonies now, of which I will keep 6-8 of those that survive the winter. The rest will be sold on before or during the dandelion bloom. That would be the normal way of doing things here - so whatever I sell has been proven to overwinter - the risks and responsibility for treating for varroa and winter feeding are mine, but noone can come back at me blaming me for their winter losses/varroa infestation/poor quality queens...

[gavin]

And so not for the first time are standards higher in Germany. If more people would raise colonies for sale we might get to this position here too. Alternatively if we up our game regarding management for overwinter survival we wouldn't be trying to fill empty boxes as well as raise nucs for sale. These Paynes polystyrene nucs seem to be good for overwintering.

[Neils]

My aim next year is to start raising nucs for overwintering with a view to selling them in the spring for much the same reasons that Calum cites.

It seemed to me that if I could come into spring with a couple of overwintered Nucs I'd be beating people off with a stick to have them. Early as wanted and having a proven, overwintered queen.

I'm not convinced that I'll stick with the poly full hives at the moment, but was thinking that poly Nucs wouldn't be a bad idea for overwintering though all of my cedar nucs came through winter this year.

[Jon]

I have 11 nucs with 2012 grafted queens from my best colonies made up so far, all in 7 frame correx boxes although some are dummied down to 4 or 5 frames
Most of them are strong already and should have no problem going through winter.

I have rigged up some slot shelving at the outside end of my shed and I can fit 16 nucs in 4 rows of 4 on it so the plan is to overwinter them all there.
They will be pushed together and will have insulation on top.
I have converted the correx nucs to OMFs.
Photo to come when all are in place.
Half of them are at my allotment at the moment.

[Neils]

The weather's scuppered the plan for this year. We've tinkered with queen rearing, messed most of it up and the weather has hit a couple of colonies hard so we've been sorting those out and getting rid of some bad tempered queens this year. I still hope to go into winter with 6 colonies of some description and add more stuff to the ongoing "Next season..." list. :)

[prakel]

My aim next year is to start raising nucs for overwintering with a view to selling them in the spring for much the same reasons that Calum cites.

A great plan to generate an extra cash input at the 'quiet' end of the year which anyone with good bees and husbandry skills could follow.

So often the extra cost of overwintering is given as the reason for importing early queens but on a small scale for our own use and to supply a few locally there's no real cost when balanced against the alternative of not overwintering a couple of 'spares' and then finding our single colony queenless in the Spring.


I'm not convinced that I'll stick with the poly full hives at the moment, but was thinking that poly Nucs wouldn't be a bad idea for overwintering though all of my cedar nucs came through winter this year.

Interesting thoughts and I would like to hear more of your thinking on this subject, but perhaps this isn't the right thread. I've no real experience of poly beyond mating nucs but as my post on the home made mating nuc thread earlier this week showed, even in this area I'm looking towards making my own in wood and will be putting ten into winter alongside eight poly versions. They've already proven themselves as suitable for mating the queens (no difference to the poly boxes) in a rather dreary summer so now it's just a case of how they perform over winter and more importantly next Spring. As Mike Palmer is keen on saying:


it's not the box, it's what's in the box.

[Calum]

So often the extra cost of overwintering is given as the reason for importing early queens but on a small scale for our own use and to supply a few locally there's no real cost when balanced against the alternative of not overwintering a couple of 'spares' and then finding our single colony queenless in the Spring.

I agree with you there - its always better to have more reserves than you need. I feed my new colonies on ten frames 7kg of syrup (I'm never going to make my own, too much faff though its cheaper) thats 5,83€ feeding and varroa (not even the price of a glass and a hlaf of honey!), I paid 44€ for formic acid 60% and Oxalic acid and sugar preps for my varroa treatments - enough for +30 colonies. that works out at 1,70€ for varroa treatment /26 colonies - so 7,53€ or about six GB pounds (not even the price of a glass and a hlaf of honey!). So I'll get 80 -100 pounds for my outlay of 7,53€ + 20€ (frames and wax) or have deep reserves in case of heavy losses. simples.