Now that I have collected all of the obvious deadout’s, it’s time to go through each of them and create my Nuc setup’s. In about a month, I will begin creating my first Nuc’s (I will create the first Nucs from the strongest hives in mid-March, but most Nucs are created at the end of March through Tax day.) This is probably the most important task that I do for what I refer to has “Sustainable Beekeeping”. By creating a lot of baby hives, I am insuring myself against losses – it is one reason why I have not purchased bees since my second year in beekeeping – I simply do not need to.

My Nuc’s are 5 (either Medium or Deep) frames. I will cover the process in detail next month, but I am basically taking frames of bees (with brood and honey) out of a strong hive and placing them in the little Nuc. Of course, this leaves empty places in my parent hives, so I need to bring replacement frames for those hives. This is where my deadout’s play a key roll in the Spring Increase.

Of optimal choices for replacement frames, the best is drawn wax. The second best is foundation. I have found that giving frames of foundation to my strong hives in March seems to frequently encourage them to swarm. My theory is that they are simply not in a “drawing out wax” phase (it is cold, the flow is only starting to run, etc…) So, when you take a drawn frame (with brood and such, for a Nuc) and replace it with a frame of foundation, it seems to actually just reduce the space for the bees. They act as if the frame of foundation isn’t even there.

But, if I give them a frame of drawn wax, it really discourages the colony from swarming. They immediately go to work on the new frame (laying eggs and such.) Therefore, my primary “replacement frame” for the early Nucs is drawn wax. As of today, I have finished setting up all of my initial Nuc setup’s for the March run. I have a few nuc bodies out there on overwintered Nucs, which I will be picking up in the next couple of weeks.

The season seems to be getting off to a fairly good start!