# help me understand the purpose of wintering nucs



## I'llbeedan (Mar 31, 2013)

I am fairly new to bee keeping, I have been led to believe that we want to build a strong colony with ample stores to survin=v the winter. it seems to be one of the main focuses of bee keeping. 

Now I read about people starting Nucs to winter bees in. Some have posted starting time frames as late as September. 
I do not understand it! If the goal is to have a colony large enough to survive the winter. then why start one in a nuc for the winter. It seems counter productive. Can anyone help me understand this aspect of bee keeping?


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

I have no experience with this but I asked my mentor the same question and I'm sure it varies by area but he seems to get nucs through winter on less feed we suspect a late brood break in raising a new queen helps with a varoa reduction and healthier bees going into winter I'm not sure though if enough studies have been done yet for anyone to give you a solid answer though


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

The point is (to me anyway) is best summed up by Michael Palmer, when he calls nucs "queens with support staff". To me, the point of nucs is to winter as many colonies as you can, on as little gear and food as possible. It gives you more flexibility. It means you are likely to have more living colonies in the spring - bottom line.

With living colonies, you have a lot of options. Selling nucs, building up for production, pollination - it all depends on living bees. Think about it. One big, double deep colony wintering, or maybe 3 or 4 wintering nucs on the same amount of gear and food? 4 chances vs. 1. I like the odds...

I'm just getting into it having wintered my first nucs last winter. But I'm building toward a nuc-based approach.

Adam


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

In this day of 30% winter losses, I suspect the practice of overwintering a larger number of smaller colonies leaves more colonies in spring than overwintering fewer colonies of a larger size. There are other advantages for queen producers and package producers as well.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

I have done it - takes something like two frames of brood, three frames of food put in a five frame nuc. If you are worried about them, put another box on top and fill it with candy bricks. covered by burlap insulation.

Mr. Palmer does it with double nucs - side by side. He is also in a place that is colder, longer.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

This is the sustainable apiary concept espoused by Mike Palmer and others. The idea is to take otherwise unproductive colonies, break them up in the summer time into mini colonies that will over winter as nucs. Mike is using a 4 over 4 deep configuration now. It takes some work to keep the nucs nuc sized. Some are wonderful at drawing comb; Some are wonderful at creating bees. These are resources to be harvested and used in your other colonies. Nucs need TLC and lots of stores to get through the winter. Starvation is a probability instead of a possibility if they go unchecked.

Brother Adam often said that a queen after her first winter was at her best. Over wintered nucs typically build up very quickly in the spring - in fact I read something about over wintered nucs and foundation recently - the takeaway was they don't mix. The overwintered nuc wants to expand so rapidly that foundation doesn't work well, often causing the nuc to swarm.

So here is a summary of over wintered nucs pluses and minuses:

pluses:

made up from otherwise unproductive colonies
young queen - proven winter survivor
nuc is a true nuc, meaning the queen is the mother of all the bees in the colony
having nucs on hand means they are always available to be combined into colonies that need more bees
nucs at time can produce lots of drawn comb and surplus brood that can be used to beef up other colonies
available in the very early spring - not dependent on good times for queen rearing in other states

minuses

nucs are not easy to over winter, they require more food and more inspections than usual - 100% success is very unusual
managing nucs requires a different mindset and an understanding of small colony biology
tendency to swarm if not installed in a full size hive with drawn comb fairly early in the spring

Mike Palmer who is the most vocal and experienced over wintering proponent that I know of could add lots to this thread

The basic idea is that full size colonies can die off for a variety of reasons each year. Overwintering nucs is a way for beekeepers to make up for their losses without ordering packages. 

I hope this helps.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

Speaking of the need to switch to a full sized hive early in Spring, my best efforts were in 8 frame boxes with follower boards making them a nuc. Pull the boards out in the Spring. 

Mr. Palmer has this stuff down to a science. My efforts cannot compare.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

In my expernce its a odds thing. more nuc/ queens gives you more chances of good queens come spring. I find in all overwintered hives about 30% will NOT take off and grow like we want. many guys say that its higher than that..... so if I have 10 strong hives wintered i end up with 7 good hives. If I had split them and got 40 hives If i factor 30% winter loss I have 28 and another 30 that don't take off I still have 18 or so that take off well. 
Personaly I have not been able to recreate Mikes system, but I also have not been willing to make double nucs like he runs. Cluster size feed levels and wrapping all matter...... for me its been more valuable to buy packages and make splits than nucs.....


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## JClark (Apr 29, 2012)

Paul McCarty said:


> Mr. Palmer does it with double nucs - side by side. He is also in a place that is colder, longer.


If I remember correctly, he then puts these two side by side nucs on top of a standard 10 frame hive. Heat from the hive below also keeps the nucs warmer thus increasing the probability of a successful over-winter. This, plus the numbers game as already mentioned, are the big benefits of this method. 

Someone here a while back had posted links to videos of some of Palmer's presentations and I suggest you find and watch--good stuff (I had the same thoughts as you before watching and I think he even states he had the same opinion when he started).


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

There are several reasons for overwintering nucs, which I'm going to try this year. First, you have a working hive to replace winter losses (none for me this year, although I just had a hive fail and get robbed out, my fault). Far better than trying to find one to buy, it's cheaper, and far better than attempting to get honey from a package, at least here. Easy enough to give the nuc more room, and it will rapidly grow into a full sized hive, especially if you can help out with drawn comb.

Second, you have a supply of good, known quality queens in the event you need one -- everyone occasionally squishes one, and we all have occasional (or not so occasional) duds that never expand properly or lay bad patterns, or become drone layers. Just remove the bad queen, combine with the nuc and you are back in business. No loss of honey, no long brood break while they get a new queen going, and no lost queen on mating flights or another purchased one that turns out to be a dud.

However, an overwintered nuc and an overwintered hive are not the same thing -- a nuc will have to build up quite a bit to make a large amount of honey on the spring flow compared to a full sized hive simply due to the difference in expansion ability. Most of the spring buildup occurs around here before it's warm enough to spend much time poking around in the hives, and a nuc stuck into a full sized box won't expand as fast as a hive that was originally in a full sized box and already expanding. May or may not be an issue for you, as it depends on when and how fast the honey comes in during the spring. We get quite a bit pretty fast, if you don't have a good sized hive and lots of drawn comb you miss most of it. Plenty more later, but the early stuff, which is highly desirable (water white) will be gone before a nuc builds up enough.

Call it cheap insurance -- Langstroth recommended keeping at least half as many nucleus hives as production hives, the way things are these days, you might want more. 

Peter


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

psfred said:


> Far better than trying to find one to buy, it's cheaper, and far better than attempting to get honey from a package, at least here.
> 
> if you don't have a good sized hive and lots of drawn comb you miss most of it. Plenty more later, but the early stuff, which is highly desirable (water white) will be gone before a nuc builds up enough.
> 
> ...


Fred, if your not getting honey out of packages your doing it wrong. put them on 5-6 frames of drawn comb to start, and you will get splits and honey out of 75% of them.

your sooooo right about that early honey. I managed to get a cpl nucs to survive, and they Are the slowest hives I have.


Mike Palmer winters in a single deep devide into 2 halves... not seperate nucs. he also places these over other hives for heat retention.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

gmcharlie said:


> Mike Palmer winters in a single deep devide into 2 halves... not seperate nucs. he also places these over other hives for heat retention.


You are almost right and I imagine Mike will chime in at some point.

Mike over winters production colonies as double deeps.
He over winter nucs as a divided deeps with 4 frame nuc boxes on top. His methods have evolved over the years. He no longer places them above other colonies.

As for getting honey from a first year package - that is very much regional. In Northern New England it is uncommon to get honey from a first year package - especially one started on foundation.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Because Nucs are the most fun you can have with your bee suit on.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

I could never get honey from a package where I am at. It would be over before the package got here.

Mike Palmer also supers his double nucs with a common super and queen excluder, if I am not mistaken.


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## mgalimbe (May 8, 2012)

This is my second year with overwintering nucs. I just had one deep split in two and lost one half due to starvation. I just split a hive into 8 nucs and added grafted queen cells which I will overwinter. I may even split these nucs one more time depending on how they build up. 

I learned a lot from attending an overwintering nuc class in maine put on by Erin Forbes and also learned a lot from mike palmers vidoe. Here is the link http://vimeo.com/23178333.

the whole puropse to overwintering nucs is two fold, first you have queens that made it through a winter and you have queens and brood to populate a weak hive or one that lost its queen.

Just remember split your weak hive into nucs not your producing hives, use your producing hives that are in year 2 to raise queens in to populate your nucs.

I hope this helps and watch that video, it will answer a lot of your questions.
mike G


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Honey from a package is problematic here because we almost always have a serious pollen and nectar dearth from mid to late July through mid September -- usually no rain and hotter than blazes (at least for the Midwest). Not much honey gets stored as a result, and although we have long, sunny falls, not a huge honey flow most years. It's typical to need to feed up a goodly portion of colonies, let alone have a package get big enough to store much.

The exception is a good year for soybean honey and rain in August, but that's not been the usual pattern lately. It's more likely a package of bees on foundation will need some serious feeding in September to be strong in the spring.

If, however, you were very lucky and close to a source of sweet clover, I'd bet you could get a honey crop from a package. Sadly, no one raises cattle anymore around here, hence no clover hay, so no clover to speak of other than wild stuff along the roads.

Peter


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## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

Wintering in nucs is about stacking the odds in your favor. If you winter two hives and loose one you have 50% loss, but if you break those two hives down into 6-8 nucs you could loose 4-6 before you have less than 2 hive the next season.

Nothing is perfect: even the people who have been working on wintering nucs for years have high losses sometimes.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

I'llbeedan said:


> then why start one in a nuc for the winter.


You wouldn't start one you would start multiple nucs. One probably wouldn't make it.
The reason for over wintering nucs is costs. It costs less then buying packages and most likely the nucs would be ahead of any package you could buy in the spring time. If you are a back yard beek with 2 or 3 hives there is hardly any advantage.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Lot of misreading here.... first I said Mike winters in divided deeps on top other colonies.. didn't say one way or the other about how strong the base colonies are.....

If you start a package on drawn frames you will not have problems getting honey. if you start them on foundation it will be iffy. the differrnces between 5 drawn frames and foundation is huge. all but 2 of mine started in march 26 have either been split, finished double deeps or on there 3rd supers..... normal year. 
Most want to start them with nothing but foundation.... My nucs are all lame. none have finished the second deeps yet. although I did add supers to a cpl in single deeps.

If you live in NM you shouldn't have problems overwintering....... and yes pacakages would be late. but nucs wouldn't help either...

Ace, as for cost, its a matter of how you do your math. if you simply factor in feed and losses, you find that nucs do not really save money. feeding just 15lbs of honey at 5.00 a lb, and roughly 50% losses packages are cheap unless you buy full retail.

Not saying nucs are bad, just saying so far, I see no perks and and a lot of wasted honey and effort. Just my opinion......


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

gmcharlie said:


> If you live in NM you shouldn't have problems overwintering....... and yes pacakages would be late. but nucs wouldn't help either...


Sort of true, my nucs end up being more like singles when Winter hits. They are usually my best hives for the next year.


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

"If you live in NM you shouldn't have problems overwintering....... " 

I can tell someone's never been to different areas of New Mexico in the winter. This isn't like Florida I can assure you.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

Isn't that the truth - Winter to -30 and Summer to 110.


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

Speaking of over-wintering nucs though Paul, I have had pretty good luck bringing bees through the winter in single deep brood boxes here (even in Santa Fe at 7000'). I prefer to overwinter my bees in the yards in Cochiti where they are at 4500', and a lot milder on average during the winter. I know the winters in Albuquerque even allow for syrup feeing during mild winter breaks but they can actually be too warm and the bees stay more active and consume more stores. I tend to look at my singles that make it through the winter as larger "nucs". This coming fall I am planning on double stacking some 5 frame standard nucs boxes with newly mated queens to see how they winter, similar to what Mike Palmer does. If he does it in Vermont it should work here in my micro-climate quite well.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

That sounds a lot like what I do. Most of my "Hives" are really just big 8 frame nucs, unless they are a long lang style. My main yard is about 7500' and I usually have better luck overwintering them than down in the desert at 3500' feet. I have come to realize that you can overwinter an 8 frame deep very easily, especially if you put a block of candy or two on each before winter sets in. It gets really cold, but never stays cold for more than a week or so, typically heating up to about 40 so the bees can get to their food and also giving the beekeeper the option of opening them up to check things every so often. I only lost one hive last year, and that was a desert hive that I pulled the candy from too soon - they flew off. I used to really worry about winter, but not so much any more (Especially after I overwintered a 3 frame hive/nuc last year - late split.). Just make sure they are in the full sun, keep checking the candy and 9 out of 10 they will make it. Most of the time, I have candy left in Spring.

Cochiti is nice - I have driven through there before and thought it might be a good place for bees, mostly down near the river. Unfortunately, we have no rivers where I am at. I am pretty much stuck with desert mesquite, which is not all bad. The crops - mostly alfalfa, are pretty hit or miss here - and the fruit trees come on too early for much real production out of them. The mesquite is much more reliable but only if the rains come.

I imagine Cochiti at 4500' is more like where I am at in the south at 7500'. Santa Fe can get pretty darn cold. 

Also, I have found The flash freezes and alternating high/lows is more of a problem than Winter itself. I lose a few queens to it every year. The cluster can't make it back fast enough and the queen is lost. Pretty sure that is what happened to my hive that flew off last year, as I found the dead queen on the bottom board. They were there one week and going strong, then a freeze came and poof! Gone.


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## VeggieGardener (Oct 4, 2011)

Acebird said:


> You wouldn't start one you would start multiple nucs. One probably wouldn't make it.
> The reason for over wintering nucs is costs. It costs less then buying packages and most likely the nucs would be ahead of any package you could buy in the spring time. If you are a back yard beek with 2 or 3 hives there is hardly any advantage.


Why would one nuc probably not make it? I over wintered two nucs this past winter (one top bar nuc and one lang) mainly as insurance to replace any normal hive losses. They over wintered just fine in single boxes, alone, and without being wrapped or any other special care aside from a sugar brick provided as emergency feed if needed.

All my hives survived including the nucs so I used one to start a new hive and sold the top bar nuc for $100, so it was definitely worth it and can provide some benefits and advantages regardless of the size of your apiary. Also that nuc that over wintered is now probably my strongest colony.


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

Average winter temperatures for Cochiti area are 35 for January and 45 for February. According to the experts that's pretty much an ideal wintertime temperature to over-winter bees. They get plenty of days for cleansing flights. Your correct this agricultural area surrounds the Rio Grande river for 8-10 miles and is quite fertile. Irrigated alfalfa being the main cash crop at least allows my bees to work the periphery between cuttings. Salt cedar and Russian olive are prevalent. We do not have any mesquite here. Desert bloom this year (and last) has been non-existent as we have had no rain since February. It is way beyond dry. It is severe. I made 15-20 5 frame splits this spring and gave them all frames of honey. Nutritionally I have seen a major difference than bees getting by on syrup. Pollen is copious and I have never found the need to feed any supplements in my area. Good luck on your upcoming talk with the NM Assoc.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

Yeah thanks - I need it. I sort of got roped into it, but it should work out OK. Not many people up North play with the wild bees we have down south. I guess they want to hear about them. My goal is to get people a little less fearful of some of the bees we have here.

Climatically, Cochiti sounds a lot like where I live, but we average more around 30-32 degrees in January.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

VeggieGardener said:


> Why would one nuc probably not make it?


If the winter is long it might run short on honey or bees. Grouping them obviously has advantage otherwise people wouldn't bother doing it.


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## BayHighlandBees (Feb 13, 2012)

in general the larger the bee home is, the harder it is for the bees to heat it and keep it warm over winter. Come winter time you'll want to pack your bees in fairy tight (remove all unneeded supers). If you have small hives, the only way they might be able to survive winter is in a nuc. You'll want to make sure they have enough easy accessible honey to tide them over, but nothing more than that.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

That may be good practice, but a small cluster of bees *can* survive a good bit of cold and even thrive with a lot of space and a lot of ventilation if their other needs are met. 

I had one that I thought was dead last winter and I was about to sort out the equipment and discovered that there was a cluster of live bees the size of a tennis ball - in 2 8 frame mediums. It not only survived, but it now fills 3 8 frame medium boxes. It built up too late to be productive making honey, but I have stollen brood from it several times.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

I fill the extra space with burlap in winter , and put a burlap cover over the top bars.


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## BayHighlandBees (Feb 13, 2012)

If their housing is too big and their numbers are small you can get into the situation where the cluster ends up in a section where there's no more honey. They won't be able to break cluster to get to the area where the honey is and then they starve. 

this recent winter I had a small colony that died this way. They starved in a hive I eventually extracted 2.5 gallons of honey from. If the 3 week cold snap was a few days shorter, if the honey stores weren't on the sides of 10-framed deeps or if I'd have had them in a single deep or a nuc (instead of 2 deeps) they'd have made it.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

David LaFerney said:


> It built up too late to be productive making honey, but I have stollen brood from it several times.


typical problem I see with overwintered nucs.........Just finished checking 60 hives half nucs, half packages all set may 19. Packages have more comb drawn, other than that hard to tell the differences. lost 1 queen in each set.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

I wouldn't say that is typical at all. I use all 8 frame mediums - about equal to a 5 frame deep - and I prefer to over winter in doubles. Those generally grow into productive hives by the time our flow starts. The ones that lag can always be combined.

My motto about nucs is that I would rather go into winter with 2 small hives than 1 big one, cause I'm twice as likely to still have bees when the fun starts in April.


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## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> Mike winters in divided deeps on top other colonies..


Actually I think he has said on here that he abandoned wintering nucs above other colonies and now he just winters them side by side without a colony under them. 

The best success I have had wintering nucs involved stacking them on top of eachother. I divided hive bodies in half and stacked them 5 high so that each stack contained 10 nucs. I had close to 100 % survival that winter. The issue with doing it this way is that you have to make sure they have enough stores because there is no way to supplemental feed.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

bluegrass said:


> Actually I think he has said on here that he abandoned wintering nucs above other colonies and now he just winters them side by side without a colony under them.
> 
> The best success I have had wintering nucs involved stacking them on top of eachother. I divided hive bodies in half and stacked them 5 high so that each stack contained 10 nucs. I had close to 100 % survival that winter. The issue with doing it this way is that you have to make sure they have enough stores because there is no way to supplemental feed.


Possible seems he either changes his methods a lot or his story.........

How many of your nucs take off well, and what ratio feed/bees are you using???

David, may not be typical for you, but sure is for me and most of my friends..... nucs expand too slow to be any use. they do okay if you combine a cpl. but that defeats the point.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

BayHighlandBees said:


> in general the larger the bee home is, the harder it is for the bees to heat it and keep it warm over winter.


They don't heat the hive and they don't keep it warm for winter but they do consume honey to keep the cluster warm. If there is enough honey and enough bees they will make it (assuming no varroa infestation) no matter how big the cavity is.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> typical problem I see with overwintered nucs.........Just finished checking 60 hives half nucs, half packages all set may 19. Packages have more comb drawn, other than that hard to tell the differences. lost 1 queen in each set.


Nucs set up on May 19 are in no way comparable to nucs that were made the previous summer and wintered.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

bluegrass said:


> Actually I think he has said on here that he abandoned wintering nucs above other colonies and now he just winters them side by side without a colony under them.


Yes, that's correct. With two story nucs there is no need to stack over other colonies.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> Possible seems he either changes his methods a lot or his story.........
> 
> How many of your nucs take off well, and what ratio feed/bees are you using???
> 
> David, may not be typical for you, but sure is for me and most of my friends..... nucs expand too slow to be any use. they do okay if you combine a cpl. but that defeats the point.


Excuse me? Do I detect a bit of an attitude?

Well I can't speak for you and your friends, but as far as nucs expanding too slowly to be of any use... those are your nucs not mine. Those are your's and your friend's spring splits...with bought queens, not over wintered nucs with good queens. 

Anyone here buy my nucs from Betterbee? Are they building up too slowly to be of any use??


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## BMAC (Jun 23, 2009)

I agree with Mike. I have seen that doubling a NUC is as effective for overwintering as doubling full sized colonies.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

they were overwintered nucs. fianlally ready to put into hives..... very late attitude?? nope just read a different plans of yours all over the web, from side by side to over hives and so on.......I am sure just this spring you advised setting them on other hives to conserve heat... now its modified again.... your choice of course. just hard to pin down a moving target. and I am sure there is more than one method. You probably have some great genetic line that works well for you. fantastic..... so far here thats not worked out well. the details of the plans are a bit sketchy as to how to balance bees and food, and air flow... as far as I can tell its still more art than science... you seem to have the art down great! the original OP asked opinions on why..... so far very little of the country has had the success you seem to....... if they did lots of guys would do it, and package guys would be gone in a year.....

Its also interesting to note, some business models are just not scaleable...

in the meantime, very few are successful, and IN MY experince and OPINION... its not profitable or worthwhile for a honey producer. if you want to sell nucs it may be.......


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Strong enough does not mean strong as possible. it means strong enough.

I also do not observe that bees eat any honey through the winter. they use it in the spring for rearing brood.

two 5 frame two story nucs I made in August of 2012 where three story honey producing colonies by mid May of this year. Build up started in late February. and was over by at least a month by mid May. Bees where making honey before those packages and nucs on May 19th where even getting set up.

IN comparison a full size 10 frame douple beed colony I over wintered right next to those nucs was a 5 story hive producing honey in mid may. the strange thing is I was able to harvest the exact small amount of honey from each on May 26th. 20 lbs from each hive. although the full size hive was 5 stories tall and packed with well over three times as many bees. They produce far more honey no doubt. but it goes to feed a lot more bees. not into my honey pot. Same production from a drastically different population. only the large hive is far less Efficient.

The jury is till out as to how it will all play out over the entire season. SO far it looks like the full size hive is gaining ground on the nucs. but not by enough. on a per resource cost basis the nucs are putting a full size hive to shame.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Daniel Y said:


> on a per resource cost basis the nucs are putting a full size hive to shame.


That might be location specific where the summer season is a long dearth. If there was nectar all summer long more bees equals more honey.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> Anyone here buy my nucs from Betterbee?


Not yet, but it is good to know if I ever get in a pinch.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Paul McCarty said:


> Sort of true, my nucs end up being more like singles when Winter hits. They are usually my best hives for the next year.


What do you mean more like singles???
Understand the elavation thing and the snow... you also have a "short winter" with lots of chances to break cluster and feed most of the winter, as well as an in state oportunity to move to lower elavations... much of the country deals with 3-4 months staight of sub zero and snow....
Didn't mean to imply a panacea..... but it sure seems to me that summers are harder than winters for most of that state.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> in the meantime, very few are successful, and IN MY experince and OPINION... its not profitable or worthwhile for a honey producer. if you want to sell nucs it may be.......


I've been too exhausted and too busy to reply to this statement until now. The queens are reared, the 500 nucleus colonies made, and I can take a breath...

In my opinion and experience, making mid-summer nucs and wintering them is key to a successful, non-migratory honey production apiary. 

I see from a recent post in another thread, you call yourself a "sideliner". As a sideliner, how do you replace your winter losses? Splitting your strong colonies? How much honey production does that cost your sideline operation? What about the years when the colonies aren't strong enough to split? Buying package bees? Is that a sustainable practice? What does that do to your bottom line?

As a sideliner, how much production are you able to realize? Are you making a living from your bees? Sideliner implies you're not.

I'm a honey producer making a living from producing honey. Nuc sales are my sideline, and only account for a small fraction of my income. The 37 tons of honey I produced last summer is far more profitable than the 100 or so nucs I sold this spring. Of course, the 250 nucs that were wintered and used in the operation are priceless.

So, I don't really see how you can say that wintering nucs isn't profitable or worthwhile for a honey producer. I say it's a critical link to success. 

You seem to have it all down...would you care to share just why you consider making nucleus colonies from your non-producing production colonies isn't profitable or worthwhile? What do you do with colonies that aren't producing a honey crop. Waste that valuable brood/bee resource by letting them be?

I'm not trying to get in an argument, just reply to your statement...which I consider uninformed.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

no problem, we can surely discuss and even disagree!.... at the moment i am a side-liner because its all I want. I have several other things keeping me busy. I have been replacing bees for the most part. I over winter a few, but work much more towards Ron Housholders model. I take all the honey I can. As a side-liner I am able to retail all my honey + and do not feed 60.00 worth of bees 200.00 worth of honey. AS of yet I have not been impressed with the buildup or capabilities of any overwintered colonies compared to packages. again, not an argument, just observation so far. Bees overwintered do not build up in time to do apple pollination here, or get in on much of the spring flows.
Not saying they can't just that I havent found that formula or timing yet. I am very sure i am in an area that is very tough to winter. we run wet, wet,wet cold all winter...... that said, I do overwinter queen breeders, and have been trying for nucs. Every year I put up at least 20, and just finished setting up 30 this year myself, and may do another 20 after I bring them back to the yard.( on pumpkins now)

I am sure your method is working great for you, and I have no complaints with mine. If I read your math right you average 74lbs or so a hive, not sure if your running singles or doubles, And no matter, my numbers are just a bit higher for singles. so our productions are very simalar.

I am not against nucs. just understand that they are not as easy to create and sell as you think. You may consider me uniformed, I consider you to be overly optimistic. Nucs sales and production in this country is tiny. way less than 5% of the bees sold are nucs... and of that probably less than 1% are actually overwintered nucs even the majority of production beeks make spring splits, not overwinter nucs.

I think the reality is you have an art, and you have mastered it. But the reality in my yards is that it is just that, and art and one no one around here has mastered. I will continue to try others methods, yours included. but would not consider it to be economical for me yet.

I have not in the past considered useing the non producers as that was such a small number. however this year, I did just that and split and replaced with some of my own late queens and several from other suppliers. 

I am very curious as to how you stack your frames in the nuc. If we assume that 2 frames of bees and 3 of food, and that the cluster resides in the Middle, where do you place the food? if it were in the middle then it would not be one "larger cluster" and if you placed them to the outside, the cluster would need to split up to access it?? 

Charlie


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Charlie:

You aren't far from me and around here a nuc will always outperform a package, starting with the fact you can have an overwintered nuc into a full deep and expanding at about the same time you get a package from Kelley's. I would assume you would stand a much better chance of getting a good honey crop from it.

I have honey accumulating on my hive (and my brother's) in May with the tulip poplar bloom, about the time a package will have the first round of brood emerging. 

I'm just a hobby beekeeper at the moment, but it's much cheaper to maintain healthy hives than to buy packages and take all the honey every year so far as I can see. Once my brother and I get the hang of this hobby, I expect we will get 60 - 100 lbs of honey per hive with minimal work, and maybe more if we can locate some it better forage.

We do not have to feed most years, either.

Peter


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

I can see a one and done package bee honey system in the right area with the right timing. Leaves plenty of drawn comb for next year!. But that misses the point of the nuc system. The real question is what do you do with a so-so hive? Hope for the better or plan for improvement? I'll take the plan.
So every 2nd year package is a great hive or it is a deadout? No tag along hives?
If the nuc system isn't working for you then maybe you are trying to mix a " flash in the pan" queen when another queen line would work?


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

I try to follow a model similar to Michael Palmer and it does indeed work for me. I split my colonies into nucs when their production falls off. The re-start seems to do them good. I never plan to buy a package again. Can't even get them here until the first bloom is over normally, and my overwintered colonies are usually busting at the seams. 

Self-sustainment is the key.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> I over winter a few, but work much more towards Ron Housholders model. I take all the honey I can. As a side-liner I am able to retail all my honey + and do not feed 60.00 worth of bees 200.00 worth of honey. AS of yet I have not been impressed with the buildup or capabilities of any overwintered colonies compared to packages. again, not an argument, just observation so far. Bees overwintered do not build up in time to do apple pollination here, or get in on much of the spring flows. Charlie


Well, thanks for that. Now I understand why you say what you do. If you don't winter bees, but take the honey and buy new bees the following year, wintering nucleus colonies and managing bees isn't necessary.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Michael Palmer said:


> Well, thanks for that. Now I understand why you say what you do. If you don't winter bees, but take the honey and buy new bees the following year, wintering nucleus colonies and managing bees isn't necessary.




Michael, You missed my point and question

Salty, Trying both theories at considerable effort. so far, one theory has out produced the other by HUGE margins. I have a cpl lines of swarm/survivor bees I am working. they winter well in full colonies. but so far nucs have been a waste of resources. Probably the way I set them up, admitted. the one year I tried wintering hives on top of each other, I lost all the hives. The bottoms and the nucs on top. (I think moisture was a huge issue.) this damp weather here makes it a challenge.

My queen, survivor hives do fine and take off just fine, had 3 that I split in late march which was early this year. They are still behind where a fresh package on 10 drawn frames ends up. In the last 4 years I have tried overwintering nucs, I have yet to have anything that resembles success. BUT... that doesn't mean I give up......

If you take this all back to the point of the original question though, reality of the market and overwintering nucs is not as simple as some would make it. That was and is my point. the number of talented people overwintering nucs and selling them is tiny...... very tiny and there are reasons.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Thank you gmcharlie for the feedback.

I as a general obsevation I have seen, a package that is installed during a cold rainey stretch stays conservative, it just never tries to get big fast. A package that has a goodsunny warm start keeps on growing. Something that fits your local or not?

As a technigue do you pull from the nuc and install in regular hive at the same time as packages? Just thinking out loud here.


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## SRatcliff (Mar 19, 2011)

> I am very curious as to how you stack your frames in the nuc. If we assume that 2 frames of bees and 3 of food, and that the cluster resides in the Middle, where do you place the food? if it were in the middle then it would not be one "larger cluster" and if you placed them to the outside, the cluster would need to split up to access it??
> 
> Charlie


When the nucs are made up, they are given 1 frame of honey(against the divider), 1 frame of capped brood, 1 partially capped frame of brood, and 1 empty drawn frame on the outside. They are given a caged mated queen. Around 12 days later the nucs are checked, making sure the queen is released and laying, and they are also given a 4-frame deep super. The super should have 3 frames of foundation and 1 frame of partial brood brought up from the bottom(usually the one against the divider). The now empty slot in the bottom is given a frame of foundation. 

Depending on the timing of the flow and how strong the nucs are made, they need to be checked again in a couple weeks or less because the frames of foundation will be full of capped honey and brood. You don't want them to swarm, so take the frames of capped honey away for either extracting or feed frames later. If there are 3 frames of brood in the super, give 1 to a nuc that wasn't made as strong. Replace with foundation.

The feed for winter should be in the super. Hope this clears some things up.


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## adson (Nov 25, 2009)

Charlie, It sounds like you have had some bad luck with the nucs. 
I think if you stick with it you might change your outlook on this down the road. 
I am seeing a lot of people here in the northeast talking about the nucs as a good way of getting off the perpetual package treadmill. Many small backyard beekeepers are beginning to overwinter nucs successfully and I wouldn't say it's as a result of having a lot of "talent." They aren't doing it because Mike wants to sell them nuc, but because they want to become sustainable by making their own increases and also be able to have quality queens year after year. 
On the other side of the issue, this year was a bad year for a lot of us around here with a good percentage of the packages that came up here had poorly mated queens.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> I am very curious as to how you stack your frames in the nuc. If we assume that 2 frames of bees and 3 of food, and that the cluster resides in the Middle, where do you place the food? if it were in the middle then it would not be one "larger cluster" and if you placed them to the outside, the cluster would need to split up to access it??
> 
> Charlie


Actually, if you keep nucs in a double nuc box configuration, the middle of the cluster is not at the center of each nuc. The center of the broodnest is at the divider....the nucs share the divider as their center. So the nucs are set up as SRatclif says. They then move the feed from the "center" comb, filling the comb with brood. When another nuc box is added to each, again the center is at the divider. The brood is in the 3 "center" of the bottom box and in the two "center" combs of the super. The honey would be in the two "outside" combs in the top box. The top box would be full after the fall flow...pushing any brood rearing into the "center" of the bottom box.

This all is nothing new. 


Nucleus Colonies Historical References


Miller, Dr. C. C., Fifty Years Among the Bees, 1911, The A. I. Root Company

The frames for nuclei are the regular full sized frames, and a full hive may be used for each nucleus, but it is economy to have the hive divided up into two or three compartments for as many nuclei. P. 247

Now, if during the time I have mentioned, we can have two colonies in one hive, we shall, I think, find in advantageous in more than one direction. It is a common thing for bee-keepers to unite two weak colonies in the fall. Suppose a bee-keeper has two weak colonies in the fall, each occupying two combs. He unites them so they will winter better. If they would not quarrel and would stay wherever they were put, he could place the two frames of the one hive beside the two frames in the other hive, and the thing would be done. Now, suppose that a thin division-board were placed between the two sets of combs, would that not see the same result? Not quite, I think, but nearly so. They would hardly be so warm as without the division-board, but nearly so; and both queens would be saved. In the spring it is desirable to keep the bees warm. If two colonies are in one hive, with a thin division board between them, they will be much warmer than if in separate hives. The same thing is true in winter. I have had weak nuclei with two combs come through in good condition during a winter in which I lost heavily; these nuclei having no extra care or protection other than being in a double hive. You would understand the reason of all this easily if in winter you would look into one of these double hives in the cellar. On each side the bees are clustered up against the division-board, and it looks exactly as if the bees had all been in one single cluster, and then the division-board pushed down, through the center of the cluster. P. 300


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

A picture might help (a friends' apiary): winter clusters of two hives do combine into one big cluster, divided by the hive walls










Obviously those hives are not nucs but Dadant hives. It even works when two full hives are put side by side. A common sight in beehouses where the hives are close next to each other, too.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

adson said:


> I am seeing a lot of people here in the northeast talking about the nucs as a good way of getting off the perpetual package treadmill.


What package treadmill? I don't see nucs having a better chance of surviving winter vs. a booming hive crammed with honey in the fall. I see overwintering nucs as a cost cutting measure for larger apiaries than the typical back yard beekeeper.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I think the management practices for a medium to large scale operation don't necessarily translate to a backyard beek with two hives. You may note be able to have any nucs as they may bump you over the amount of hives you can have in your area based on ordinances.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Ace, I don't know why it would be so. But I have seen people comment that they have better successes wintering nuc than they do booming hives. the most I have some to understand about it its that spring build up is less likely to be supported in a booming hive. If you think of spring being the most stress filled and prone to collapse period of the bees year it begins to make a little since. Bees naturally build up over populate and supposedly bring themselves to the brink of unsustainable for the purpose of dividing and reducing their numbers before they starve, overheat or whatever ti is that will do them in. A large hive will be closer to that breaking point and possibly more likely to over shoot sustainability possibly. I am just tossing out some possibilities as to why this larger hive thing may in fact be true.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

shannonswyatt said:


> I think the management practices for a medium to large scale operation don't necessarily translate to a backyard beek with two hives. You may note be able to have any nucs as they may bump you over the amount of hives you can have in your area based on ordinances.


I see little reason this could not be overcome with a little creative ingenuity and modification. a ten frame box placed on top of a ten frame lang that has a solid bottom and entrances for 5 frame compartments on either side. housing two nucs but camouflaged as part of the single lang hive.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

So it is ok to break the laws as long as one is not caught! 

Maybe I should just make a few tower hives! Yes sir, only two hives for those 2 million bees!

The point I was making is more about scale. Even if you could have 4 (or 8, or 16 etc), how many do you want as a backyard beekeeper? If you a happy with 4 hives and overwinter 4 nucs and all make it you are at 8 hives now. Do you want eight hives? If you are commercial you will probably want as many as you can afford and maintain. You could always sell off excess if it occurs. It may be worth it for a backyarder to just purchase packages in the spring.


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## VeggieGardener (Oct 4, 2011)

shannonswyatt said:


> I think the management practices for a medium to large scale operation don't necessarily translate to a backyard beek with two hives. You may note be able to have any nucs as they may bump you over the amount of hives you can have in your area based on ordinances.


But a backyard beekeeper who has room or desire for only a couple of hives may find it convenient to over winter a nuc or two as their insurance to replace a hive or queen if needed, instead of relying on a package supplier to cover any losses. Then the over wintered nuc could easily be sold in the spring if it wasn't needed as a replacement.


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## VeggieGardener (Oct 4, 2011)

shannonswyatt said:


> It may be worth it for a backyarder to just purchase packages in the spring.


I'd rather control and know what I'm getting in terms of quality... and make a little cash rather than spend it.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

True. I'm not speaking for myself, just trying to think of why overwintering nucs would not be a good option. I figure if you end up with too many hives you can find someone to buy them from you.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

SRatcliff said:


> and they are also given a 4-frame deep super. The super should have 3 frames of foundation and 1 frame of partial


Okay trying to follow this,Your adding a super? or a deep on top the already set nuc?? I thought the point was to overwinter a nuc sized colony with a small amount of food??

Understand Michalels comment on the split deep as the nuc body and the cluster being at the board. now your adding another hive body of food on top that???


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## VeggieGardener (Oct 4, 2011)

Charlie, have you seen the divided nuc boxes linked to in this thread: http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?283649-Nuc-Boxes-from-Betterbee&p=952604#post952604 They are using a four frame deeps on top of a four frame deep in a divided box that holds two nuc colonies.


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## adson (Nov 25, 2009)

Shannon your point about scale is true in some cases but I think an example of where the nuc concept works well is, 
the northern backyard beek has two packages from this spring ( from the south , not survivor stock). 
One hive is doing well the other not so well. I would suggest that he is better off taking the weaker hive and creating two nucs
and adding one or two northern raised queens. then next spring he will probably have two that make it thru the winter. 
if he didn't use the nucs he would probably only have one and have to buy a package. after buying the package he is right back where he started the year before ( with two queens from the south) . if he used the nucs he now has one or two hives with survivor stock that get an early start and also can be used to split next year. those nuc splits are going to have a much higher chance to make it through the winter than any package he might have bought that spring. 

up north very few will take 4 hives and 4 nucs and come out of winter with all 8 hives if none of them were northern bred queens.
what really happens is that the 4 hives are turned into 2 hives plus 4 nucs ( 6 total) and then you might have 4 of those that survive the winter. 

these aren't my ideas but my simple take on what Mike and others are showing us.


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## winevines (Apr 7, 2007)

I never could get a good picture of both sides- but here is one of one side... and you can imagine what is on the other. In this photo, the nucs are in a divided hive body- actually a store bought and bottom board modified BM queen castle which needed shims as the divider sticks up. I have since just found it more practical for my management to winter in individual nuc bodies, but both methods have worked great.


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## winevines (Apr 7, 2007)

Another view

View attachment 7155


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## Bob J (Feb 25, 2013)

I have to say the MP video is awesome....:thumbsup:


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

I feel that overwintering nucs is: a way to make increases, a way to take advantage of a lack of available packages/nucs in late winter/early spring, and a way to apply Flottum's statement, "Choose the queens you want, rather than settle for the ones you get." . If they do overwinter successfully, they're likely the queens you want.

So, it's part productivity, part timing, and part queen selection.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

Getting nucs to survive northern winters is the key, for me anyways. This is where I need to find out what I'm doing wrong, to get a higher percentage surviving, otherwise all the work in establishing the nucs the late summer or fall beforehand is a waste of time and resources. Michael Palmer has his system down real well and it works great for him. I totally agree with Michael that nucleus colonies are the foundation of successful beekeeping, there are just so many options on what to do with nucs. I have found that nucs that do make it through the winter in good shape are boomers the next year, if they come through in very weak shape they will struggle into early summer at least. Just my observations.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Thanks for the link, I never got that out of the vidio online....... hmmmm thats putting an awful lot of food out for a nuc. What it really amounts to is doubleing up hives for warmth..... I have been trying to do the same with 1/2 bees 1/2 food. putting that much honey stores on for them takes a twist way into profits. I will have to go back and rewatch the video. and do some more math. 6 frames of honey for them.... thats about 200.00 retail


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

200 retail? Not if it is all sugar!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

If I can get a lot of nucs through the winter, no only do they build up quickly to full size colonies in the spring and make me a crop, but I can get many more queens through the winter this way.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

shannonswyatt said:


> 200 retail? Not if it is all sugar!


Why would your honey be sugar?? I have never been able to get them to store that much syrup at the end of the season.....

Understanding getting more queens thru the winter!.....and agree. what is the cash value of a queen in spring? so far I have not seen any real differences in queen lines, Southern, local, northern, breeds.... all seem to have the same balance of great queens and dinks...... and not seen any real differnce in successs of overwintered vs first year queens. (I haven't collected this years data yet)....... Decent conversation lines and discussion though.


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## Bill Davis (Jul 16, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> If I can get a lot of nucs through the winter, no only do they build up quickly to full size colonies in the spring and make me a crop, but I can get many more queens through the winter this way.


Could a queen be banked through the winter , and if yes what does it do to her productivity?


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

I would think the best overwinter queen bank would be a nuc and not to bank her.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Could a queen be banked through the winter

Yes.

> and if yes what does it do to her productivity? 

In my experiments it does nothing to her productivity IF you wait to bank her until she's been laying for two or three weeks.

It is easier to overwinter a nuc than a queen bank and the nuc has more of a head start in the spring.

If you want to attempt it, here is what I have learned:

1) the bank has to be warm enough to not cluster too tightly. This requires heat. Some insulation and a terrarium heater work well for this. Using lights for heat has the disadvantage of attracting bees. If you don't keep them heated then they cluster tightly and the outlying queens all die.

2) if you keep it warm enough that they don't cluster, the bees have shorter lives and consume more stores, so you probably have to intervene somewhere in the middle of winter on a reasonably warm day and give them some more bees from some strong hive or a "sacrifice" nuc and give them some more stores to keep them from starving. The reason you need more stores as opposed to just leaving them in the first place is that you have to limit the hive enough that they can't abandon the queens. A cluster has no recognition of the queens not being able to follow the cluster and they will abandon them if you give them enough space to do so.


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## Bill Davis (Jul 16, 2012)

Thanks Mike


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

I'm late to this thread, because I spend less time on Beesource in the summer. I posted part of this in a different thread already, forgive me if you have already read it.
Last winter I had 7 of 12 10 frame hives make it, whereas I had 15 out of 18 overwintered nucs survive. I am changing the proportion of the types of colonies I overwinter. At last count I have 37 in nuc format to choose from to overwinter. I have 9 hives in production and will only attempt to overwinter 4 or 5 of the top gentlest performers. I have also harvested 500 pounds of honey and expect to harvest as much again. 
This has been achieved without buying a single bee this year and only 1 queen last year. Many of my conventional fellow beekeepers lost a lot of bees this last year and were buying packages. The way I see it nucs allow me the opportunity to grow my apiary from within.
I do the best I can to ensure all get a brood break, and use 5 over 5 frame nucs. My goal is to have 50-60 pounds net of feed in each hive before the temps average below 50. Most of this will be gathered by the bees. I will top off with Mann Lake Prosweet if they are light. 
Last year I made 1900 pounds of honey from 18 production hives, this year I have been running 11. I think that is enough hives for me to satisfy my workplace market, and not to have to go to farmers markets and sit around - I have no interest in that or time to do it.
A couple of points struck me in this thread. First the "F word", raising nucs is a lot of fun; I find it much more fun than making honey. Also, it is a decent cost saving measure. If you have nucs as the backbone of your apiary you will be selling bees in the spring while others are buying. 
I dispute that they take a lot more management. It goes like this: Set them up with a cell or an MDA Split, wait a few weeks and check they are queenright, add a second level (and a pollen patty) if they are, or combine if they are not. At your leisure look at the entrance and check populations are growing and pollen is coming in. In the fall feed them if they are light. At thanksgiving pack them for winter.
Next year sell 'em, or expand 'em, or rob 'em of brood. I find that in my area bees triple their population in spring build-up, but it is not too hard to stay ahead of once you know what to expect.


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## winevines (Apr 7, 2007)

Acebird said:


> If the winter is long it might run short on honey or bees. Grouping them obviously has advantage otherwise people wouldn't bother doing it.


Maybe. Acebird is in Utica, Veggie Gardner not so far from me in Harrisburg, PA. Maybe a geographic difference influencing your opinion? Single nuc boxes will do just fine- if you set them up right and with enough time before winter. Many of us have found in this area that they will need food (fondant) in winter. Double boxes (that is 2 nuc boxes stacked on top of each other) help that food equation a bit and give you some breathing room in Spring before they pop. I have wintered both 4 frame single deeps and 9 frame (1 frame is division board feeder) stacked deeps with very high survival rates- as have many of my friends. I started when I only had 4 hives and made 2 nucs- so even in a small apiary it made sense.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Adrian, you said 50lbs of feed, is that for your nuc??

As I ponder this more, its not really wintering nucs, but wintering singles in a verticle format....


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

Here's a question, not to sidetrack things too much. We all know that Mike Palmer winters lots of nucs every year successfully, and we know his method, but surely there are others out there who are just as successful doing it on a regular basis, which is important because anyone can have high success one out of five years by accident. As vital to beekeeping as nucs are imo, getting them through the winter in good shape is a tough one for me personally and others I'm sure. Besides MP, who else can say they have a system that works extremely well for them most every year, and what is the strategy? I would like to hear from northerners preferably on this question.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

gmcharlie said:


> As I ponder this more, its not really wintering nucs, but wintering singles in a verticle format....


Yeah, there might be some grey area in the terminology.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I was wondering about wintering 5 frame mediums. If so what is the appropriate number of boxes? I know that has to do with you location, but I was wondering if you could overwinter a two box 5 frame medium setup, or is that pushing it a bit.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I was wondering about wintering 5 frame mediums. If so what is the appropriate number of boxes? 

I end up with a lot of different sized nucs going into winter. I have done five frame mediums (singles and doubles) and I've done eight frame mediums (singles and doubles). The odds of survival go up as the size goes up, but then your number of queens in the spring and nucs in the spring goes down. Some of it is a gamble on what this winter will hold. Yes, you can overwinter a nuc in one five frame medium some winters. Yes, you'll have better luck in two five frame medium boxes (assuming you have also doubled the number of bees and stores).


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

Thanks Michael!


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

gmcharlie said:


> Adrian, you said 50lbs of feed, is that for your nuc??
> 
> As I ponder this more, its not really wintering nucs, but wintering singles in a verticle format....


You have a point - I like to winter 8 frame medium doubles, but I still think of them as nucs. 8 frame medium singles winter fine too, doubles are just the way I like to do it because they have room to expand in late winter without too much messing about on my part. Large enough to require little management, small enough to be fun.

I've gotten so that anything smaller than an 8 frame single is to me a mating nuc - or a place to keep a spare queen. BTW those are also both fun to play with. 

If I was to ever get too old to work with honey hives I could still have a lot of fun (and make a bit of income I expect) with nothing but little hives. Could probably manage to rob a few frames of honey even.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

as I ponder it more the idea of doing this to sell spring nucs seems even more ridiculous... (sustaining aside) lets assume you use just 30lbs of honey. at a fair market value of 4.00 a lb you just used 120.00 worth of food, to sell the nuc for 150?? you can substitue any numbers you like, but it sure doesn't make selling nucs even close to profitable in my math.
Not saying you shouldnt to sustain your levels or increase, but thats a lot of effort and risk to make 20-30 bucks....


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Except that honey in the frame isn't the same as honey in the jar at the farmers market, and does not represent either the same street value or invested labor. 

Also all of us sugar feeding idiots are looking at more like $12 worth of winter feed thus an extra $100 in the black - more or less.

Same goes for rearing queens - "a frame of brood and one of food" to make up a mating nuc - that frame of food could be a jar of honey - so could the frame of brood in one way of thinking - plus all of your labor to produce a $20 bug. When the process is even successful. And yet queen producers keep doing it year after year. Good thing they do to.

But I think you are correct Charlie - it makes no sense whatsoever for *you* to overwinter nucs.

I wonder if Barry would let me change my handle to "Sugar Feeding Idiot?"


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

gmcharlie, wondering if the variable you are seeing is in the package end and not just the nuc end. Packages available locally are really too early for a fast start most years. Start fast, stay fast; start slow, stay slow is what I've seen. Slow start is also the most likely to immediately supercede.
If it works for you, great. Buying a package in Jan for April delivery to replace a hive that is not even dead yet sucks. 
Can't argue with your math.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

In most cases I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. If you have maxed out your yard, say you have 20 production hives and if you add a nuc the honey that it collects will be honey that won't go into your honey supers, then the comparison might be fair. I look at it as both insurance and a way to make money. So I make up my nucs with queens that I raise so there isn't a cash outflow for the queen. In the spring if I have losses I can replace them with my nucs. That's the insurance. If most survive, I can sell the over wintered nucs. That's the money.

Sorry, I didn't quote the post I was replying to. This was gmcharlies $120 cost of an overwintered nuc.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

David LaFerney said:


> Also all of us sugar feeding idiots are looking at more like $12 worth of winter feed thus an extra $100 in the black - more or less.


I was alluding to this in an earlier post.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

And you were correct.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Saltybee said:


> gmcharlie, wondering if the variable you are seeing is in the package end and not just the nuc end. Packages available locally are really too early for a fast start most years. Start fast, stay fast; start slow, stay slow is what I've seen. Slow start is also the most likely to immediately supercede.
> If it works for you, great. Buying a package in Jan for April delivery to replace a hive that is not even dead yet sucks.
> Can't argue with your math.


I ponder and work both..... early on a really sharp beek pointed out that its crazy farming to feed 50.00 worth of bees 200.00 worth of honey...... and his math is right on. Now I fully agree there are times you do it. genetics, or timing maybe... 
And of course if you can convert that to 20.00 worth of feed fantastic..... but the key in the end if this is to be farming, is the math. not the emotions. 
one of the things I am going to try this winter is useing HFCS sprayed into comb for wintering... and yes I will try it on some nucs.
This year I did a lot of testing on HFCS vs honey for spring starts. Haven't finished the data yet, but it looks like there is no differences in the end results.

We have several people who swear packages are bad and nucs are the only way..... I find it disappointing that some try to build their business based on bashing another... But that is always the case so I shouldn't be surprised.

Trying to be objective and point out there is a lot more than one answer to this question posed in the OP. and that the reality is Nuc sales are not ready to make much of a dent in the real demand out there for bees. why? the business model doesn't work well.


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## Noah's Ark (Mar 28, 2012)

I have been watching this discussion and have to agree that maintaining Nucs is the best insurance out there. Something hinted at is the $ math not working out. I agree with GM and some others this is not the case. As for feeding a colony to keep it going through a hard time or through winter, in my limited experience I don't think a simple math formula works. You feed 50.00 of bees 200.00 to get them to the next year... Why not just buy another package. Because that package will not produce the next year and you may have to fee again. An established colony is far more value than the bees themselves. You may be maintaining genetics that are mite resistant..... How do you put that in the math?

I also think many people get wrapped up in the size being the determining factor. I think of a nuc anything smaller than a production hive. The composition depends on what stage/use/georgraphic location/ etc the hive is. I am realitivly new but am contemplating going after a SARE grant to continue a few of the nuc sustainablity studies that have been done around the NE and MidAtlantic regions. I think there is more to this than has been studied, especially for the 10-40 hive beekeepers. As well as the local stock need that appears to be emerging as a real key to sustainable beekeeping. But agian I have no experience compared to many here, just a hunch that this is really a valuable practice that needs more refinement/study.


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## Beelosopher (Sep 6, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> >I was wondering about wintering 5 frame mediums. If so what is the appropriate number of boxes?
> 
> I end up with a lot of different sized nucs going into winter. I have done five frame mediums (singles and doubles) and I've done eight frame mediums (singles and doubles). The odds of survival go up as the size goes up, but then your number of queens in the spring and nucs in the spring goes down. Some of it is a gamble on what this winter will hold. Yes, you can overwinter a nuc in one five frame medium some winters. Yes, you'll have better luck in two five frame medium boxes (assuming you have also doubled the number of bees and stores).


I just wanted to clarify what you mean by singles and doubles. Basically you mean for a single, a single medium hive body with two five frame nucs in it, split with a divider?

If you make a double (two med hive bodies divided with a board and stacked)?

The configurations of the stores would be something like this correct?

H- honey
P/H - Pollen Honey
B - Brood
EC - Empty Comb
|| - divider board

10 frame medium



H*P/H*B*B*EC||EC*B*B*P/H*H



To me the benefits of the overwintering nuc idea is that you would be improving your stock and getting rid of poor queens by winter attrition (increasing your chances of good queens in the spring). The idea about support staff is also appealing. I do want to figure out how much extra feed might be needed, as I planned on doing it with honey stores.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

This discussion just shows why bees are in trouble in many areas.


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## imthedude (Jan 28, 2013)

hi all. 

been following this thread for a couple of days, mostly trying to learn about nucs and their purpose, but now my interest is piqued enough to give this a shot on a couple of my hives this winter.

here's my scenario:

i caught a couple of late swarms, one late june and one early july, and they've kind of been sputtering along trying to build up. they did a good job of building some comb initially because we seemed to have a flow still happening. the last week or two that flow seems to have ended, and their comb-building has slowed down it seems. i've been feeding, but i think there's been some unseen robbing going on (another thread topic) that has prohibited them from going about their normal business of getting established. 

long story short, i don't think either of these hives will fill a double deep by the time fall rolls around, so i'm now considering putting them into a side-by-side 5-frame deep nuc setup with a medium super of honey from another hive set over the top again with a divider in the middle to keep the colonies separate but still be able to take advantage of being next to each other for warmth/insulation purposes.

does this sound like a feasible scenario to anyone that just read all of that gibberish?

many thanks in advance.


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## Paul McCarty (Mar 30, 2011)

Not sure how cold it gets up in Colorado, but I am at 8000' down in the Southern Rockies and I over-winter single deeps all the time. Just give them a candy board or sugar for insurance. Put them in direct sun and make sure the candy is topped off. I wrap them with roofing felt sometimes to seal the wind and generate solar heat. They say you need the equivalent of 12 bars of bees and brood down here in the Santa Fe region (top bar requirements - not many lang people here). I am sure Colorado is fairly similar, unless you are way up in the mountains or near Wyoming.

I have overwintered 5 frame hives with good results. I usually move them to an 8 frame box and put followers in it, then put crumpled burlap over the candy in a super. I have only lost one hive since I started, and that was from a hive that went queenless when I pulled the insulation off too early and a freeze got her.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Yes. 
Close the entrance up bee tight if you are worried about robbing. You can stretch the comb building by adding frames to the brood nest edges or center if you really want to push them


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

the differnces between singles and doubles language may be the key here. to me a single is 8-10 deep frames. if you put them in a 5 on top of 5. its still = single.... some comments here menting 8 1/2 deep supers... to me thats a very confusing and inacuarte statement. supers are either 5 7/8 or Il as 6 5/8..... 
But yes Dude, the cluster wants to move upwards in the winter, so a 5 on top of 5 will always do better than a 10 flat. even if it supers of honey instead of deeps. 

While fully understanding the point of overwintering, there is another part of the math that most miss. Yes a package in the spring on bare frames will almost never make surplus. BUT a pacakge installed on 10 drawn frames will make 100lbs surplus easy. so if you have the comb theny boom..... if you don't have comb, buying a nuc is that answer. but don't confuse that with the nuc doing so much better, when what it is is a head start on comb. side by side test this year of packages and nucs, early start packages made a lot more comb. not sure what fall totals will be, but it looks pretty close at this point. Rough year and only one years comparision.


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## imthedude (Jan 28, 2013)

Saltybee said:


> Yes.
> Close the entrance up bee tight if you are worried about robbing. You can stretch the comb building by adding frames to the brood nest edges or center if you really want to push them


was this directed at me, as in "yes. i think your plan will work."? with regard to the robbing business, i added some crude screens last night to help these guys defend their space until i can get some nicer ones built this weekend.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Around here I don't think that there is any hope of 100lb of honey from a package on drawn comb. I haven't bought a package in 8-9 years, but I'm pretty sure that I never got more than a medium. We get packages around the 1-2 week of April so the first bees hatch around May 1. The flow will start between then and May 15 and run through June with a trickle to July 15 except in higher elevations. I suppose if I had drawn comb with 4-5 full frames of honey to give them they might start right away putting honey in supers, but my experience is that a package will build up for winter (two deeps) without feeding on drawn comb and will need some feeding with just foundation.

But nucs are not a sure thing either. Sometimes they come out of winter alive but weak. I might have to add bees and brood from other hives, but that is one of the advantages of over wintered nucs....a place to put bees and brood from hives on their way to swarming. I could always to the same thing with a package, but then it's a nuc right away, just not overwintered.

I do agree with you that packages are not as bad as many on here claim and nucs can be weak and some don't make it through winter. I always lose some. I always have extra bees now so that's the reason that I don't buy packages. If I needed to, I wouldn't hesitate to get a package.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

imthedude said:


> was this directed at me, as in "yes. i think your plan will work."? with regard to the robbing business, i added some crude screens last night to help these guys defend their space until i can get some nicer ones built this weekend.


Your doing it well.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Charlie, this is my definition of a nuc which gave at a presentation I made "A colony of bees established in 5 frames, to overwinter in 10, from which to provide next years bees with a queen ready to go." I can see your point that another might consider this a single in a different configuration. 
I also understand your contention of the economics of the cost of feed, but it is not the same for everyone. I don't have the mechanical skills to maintain the equipment needed to mechanize my extraction operation to make it worth my while to scale up in honey production and, if I were to, it would take a long time to pay it off by honey sales. Supposing I were to scale up, then I have to develop markets, and spend time and money on distributing honey. That may work for some, but it makes no sense for me personally. I prefer to make bees. 

JMGI. I am in a similar climate to you. These are my overall colony survival rates:
2008/9 1/1 A TBH
2009/10 4/4 Sugar dusting
2010/11 4/11
2011/12 21/21
2012/13 22/30
The following nuc survival rate is a subset of my overall survival rates.
2010/11 1/2
2011/12 9/9
2012/13 15/18

My personal definition of sustainability is that if I can do this for five years. Bear in mind that the only mite treatment these nucs have endured is the MDA style extended brood break. I tried sugar dusting in 2009 and haven't done it since.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Adrian, no problem at all with your choices and or plans. raising bees is great, someone has to do it! just understand the scale of economics. if everyone followed your plan, we would all have bees, and no honey sales.
I have done that leg work, and scaled up......so on my side honey is the real resource. my pollination contracts are a tiny drop.

sitting here this week pondering a "gang box" for wintering something that would be like 10 nucs togther, with the ability to put a deep on top for food..... thinking it would be easier than deviding deeps. Take bees from fall cutdowns and see what happens.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

gmcharlie said:


> as I ponder it more the idea of doing this to sell spring nucs seems even more ridiculous... (sustaining aside) lets assume you use just 30lbs of honey. at a fair market value of 4.00 a lb you just used 120.00 worth of food, to sell the nuc for 150?? you can substitue any numbers you like, but it sure doesn't make selling nucs even close to profitable in my math.


After thinking about this it has occurred to me that *even if* all of your numbers were accurate in this statement it still wouldn't mean that you didn't make a profit on the nucs because of the honey it took to produce them. You would still be selling the honey - just in the form of a nuc - except you wouldn't have to uncap it, extract it, package it, or peddle it.

If you can sell your honey and make $1000.00 from it, *or* you can feed it to nucs and sell them and still make $1000.00 from it - that is not a question of losing a $1000 in honey sales it's a question of what you would rather make your money at - making and selling honey or making and selling nucs.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

First issue with the claim above. I could not sell the honey in my nucs. it is either stored in brood frames or came from sugar water. So the 25 lbs of honey required per 5 frame nuc is about $9 in sugar. I spend more than that making the equipment that will get sold with the bees.


Not only that but you fail to account for the increased production it results in the following season.

IN comparison you can buy packages in the spring that will never produce anything or pay for wintering nucs that make 60 to 100Lbs of honey. You can even pay that same amount to buy nucs but I still don't see them produce the honey that my over wintered nucs have.

Very little work in keeping a nuc over winter. unless you simply have huge numbers of them. Still per nuc the labor is very small.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> Adrian, no problem at all with your choices and or plans. raising bees is great, someone has to do it! just understand the scale of economics. if everyone followed your plan, we would all have bees, and no honey sales.
> I have done that leg work, and scaled up......so on my side honey is the real resource. my pollination contracts are a tiny drop.


I run 700+ production colonies. I make 30-40 tons of honey. I make nearly 500 nucs each summer. I winter about 450. Each gets fed 1-2 gallons of sucrose syrup. The honey they have was made by them and they can keep it. I have about 10% loss in the nucs. I have enough to replace any winter losses in the production colonies. I have enough to sell 125. I have 100 to keep as brood factories to boost cell builders and make the summer's nucs. 

In what way this management system not economically viable? You're right Paul McC. Is beekeeping about nothing but maximizing profits?


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## Bill Davis (Jul 16, 2012)

Michael Palmer said:


> I run 700+ production colonies. I make 30-40 tons of honey. I make nearly 500 nucs each summer. I winter about 450. Each gets fed 1-2 gallons of sucrose syrup. The honey they have was made by them and they can keep it. I have about 10% loss in the nucs. I have enough to replace any winter losses in the production colonies. I have enough to sell 125. I have 100 to keep as brood factories to boost cell builders and make the summer's nucs.
> 
> In what way this management system not economically viable? You're right Paul McC. Is beekeeping about nothing but maximizing profits?


Michael what kind of treatments do you use for your bees, 10% winter loss is outstanding.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> In what way this management system not economically viable?


Hard to say without seeing the books but it sure looks good.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

David LaFerney said:


> If you can sell your honey and make $1000.00 from it, *or* you can feed it to nucs and sell them and still make $1000.00 from it - that is not a question of losing a $1000 in honey sales it's a question of what you would rather make your money at - making and selling honey or making and selling nucs.


Good point... different way to look at it....


Daniel..... not sure how you turned 9.00 in suger in to frames of food. but your way off on packages not produceing and nucs producing well.
At least for the moment, overwintered nucs here have produced far less than packages, and with losses in the 40% range last year all occuring in the last 3-4 weeks. packages on drawn comb, made me more honey by a huge margin.


Michel, you have your system.. Fantastic... maybe someday I will figure it out....seems I am totally clueless since I don't agree with everything. Its an interesting plan. I will continue to investigate, and develop methods. In the mean time I shall continue to use other methods, without feeling the need to run down others methods, and or package producers.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

gm, do you have any theories as to why your packages did better than your nucs?

It's a little hard for me to understand why packages would work better. I'm a beginner, but the nucs I bought have all done a lot better than the packages, and that is both in Florida and in northern NY. Of course, I'm a complete beginner, so this may have just been a coincidence.

Unless I lose all my bees and can't get nucs, I hope never to buy another package.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

rhaldridge said:


> ...do you have any theories as to why your packages did better than your nucs?


An nuc that you overwinter might look different than an overwintered nuc that you bought. Some nucs come out alive but weak, maybe one to two frames of bees. When you buy one, it was probably overwintered but some brood and bees might have have been added to allow the nuc to be sold earlier. If the seller kept that nuc it might have been too weak to really take off. I'm not sure how gmcharlie handled his nucs, but I use weak ones to add brood and bees from hives on their way to swarming. But I might not do that for a while depending on my plans for the nuc. If it needs to produce honey for me, I need to add bees earlier. If not, I might let it poke along and add bees when I have too many somewhere.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> overwintered nucs here have produced far less than packages, and with losses in the 40% range last year all occuring in the last 3-4 weeks. packages on drawn comb, made me more honey by a huge margin.


40% loss? Why? If the nucs are sick and/or starving, it really isn't fair to compare them with packages that are healthy.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

gmcharlie said:


> Michel, you have your system.. Fantastic... maybe someday I will figure it out....seems I am totally clueless since I don't agree with everything. Its an interesting plan. I will continue to investigate, and develop methods. In the mean time I shall continue to use other methods, without feeling the need to run down others methods, and or package producers.


I'm not running down anyone. I'm holding up my success with wintering nucs as the basis of my apiary and as another path to follow. I can't explain what I do any more than I've already done. Videos, lectures, conventions, traveling all over, posts here on BS... 

You should come for a visit next summer to see the work for yourself. Stay awhile and go through the process for a week. Stay a month and I'll pay you to help us. See the wintered nucs that have been expanded to production colonies. See the brood factory nucs and the cell building yard and the mating yard. Then maybe you'll understand.

But for now, I'm done trying to explain and defend my position. Maybe we'll see you some time...I'll leave a light on for you.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

I spent years in this business installing 1,000 or so packages each April and most years it was difficult getting a high percentage to be ready for a mid June honey flow. The biggest problem was that the Dakotas are a very unreliable area for both wintering and spring buildup. We gradually made the transition to our own southern raised nucs. First as 4 combers in a divided 10 frame box transferred in early May and then eventually to all 10 frame deeps hauled north with an average of 7 to 8 frames of brood in mid to late May. It made a night and day difference in our honey crops and most importantly on our bottom line. I always figured your first medium of honey went to pay for your package. If that isn't bad enough the nuc/singles most years were outperforming the packages by a pretty wide margin and even figuring in the time and expense in making up our nucs we had far less invested in them, per unit, than packages. Economics aside, it's what works best for you and your area. If you can reliably build up packages in your area to be ready for a flow and you can justify their cost then go for it but one should also keep an open mind about the options.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Jim, whats "southern for you? where are you wintering/raising your nucs??


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

East Texas


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## Buzzsaw2012 (Feb 1, 2012)

the reason I will be attempting it this year with 4 new northern queens {from self sustaining apiaries } is ........
What will you do when you can't buy new packages this next spring ? or they first come in the end of june ?
I know it's unlikely, but the less you have to depend on someone else the better usually.

Lee


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