Although I created a couple of Nucs in mid-March, I created several last weekend (the 3rd weekend). In central Virginia (pretty much starting in Richmond and going southeast for about 40 miles), I have found the most success by creating Nucs (on average) in the 3rd weekend. It is true that several hives were strong enough to create a Nuc, the vast majority were coming out of Spring just fine but were not to the strength that I like for taking a Nuc. That said, I tagged a bunch for taking a Nuc this coming weekend (last weekend in March and the following weekend.) This will put most of my Nucs for Sale ready in early to mid-May, which is just fine.

How do I know that it is time to take a Nuc? Well, let’s talk about my misadventures first. In the early years, I was driven to take a Nuc as early as possible (walking drones! walking drones!!!) – I remember taking a Nuc in February once! Although I did have a few successes with these super early Nucs, it took about 5 years for me to realize that I was really wasting bees – the majority of these early Nucs either failed to raise a good queen or failed to raise any queen at all.

Thanks to record keeping (and having too many hives to muck around with too early in the season), I started noticing that Nucs created in late March (regardless of a warm or cold Winter) just did better over all and, more often than not, I would successfully get another Nuc or two off the same hive (not to mention honey and whatnot.) So, several years ago, I started simply waiting until late March to even look. This has (to date) really proven to be a big boon on my Nuc creation fun (although, my Medium Nucs do not enjoy the same success as the Deeps, so I need to work on that methodology.)

So, it’s late March – what do I look for next? The bees simply need to be making a very strong show in both the Deep and the Medium brood chambers. I want them to be on at least 6 frames in one box and 5 in the other. It can be hard to wait for this (at least for me), but it doesn’t make sense why I feel that way. Every day, more drones are born in the area and the chance of getting a well mated queen increases. But, I have some kind of sickness that I just want to create those Nucs early!!! Well, this year, I have held off the urge – I think I have about 8 Nucs created and most were last weekend. This weekend, I will create at least 8 more and the season will be truly off to a good start.

I believe this will be a stellar bee season for several reasons. I also believe lots and lots of bees will be swarming. I should post about that next.

Site Update: The site was hacked on March 17. For the first time in years, I finally get back to posting and managing this blog – then what happens? Some plugin gets a security vulnerability and a loser hacks me!!! At any rate, all is well now – I apologize to any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.