Although I started a couple of Nucs last weekend, this weekend it was Game On! I am not extremely confident that the earlier Nucs will produce quality queens, I am much more confident about the handful that were created this weekend.

When I first started beekeeping, I followed the conventional wisdom of looking for Walking Drones before I started creating my Nucs. In those days, I was always biting at the bit to get some Nucs created asap. But, after a few years of looking at the numbers, I discovered that I needed to wait a little longer than that. I now wait not just for walking drones, but for large patches of capped drone brood in lots of hives. I found it in droves this weekend.

(The frame to the left came from the outside of a brood next in one of my hives – although there is some worker brood (mainly under the bees), most of the brood is capped drone brood!))

I have also found that those hives that really go overboard with the drone brood are the ones most likely to swarm (for me, anyway.) Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately!), I only found two hives that had this appearance. Both of these hives will create lots of Nucs for me between this weekend and the coming weekend. Hopefully, I can dissuade them:)

On a more general observation note, my bees are chock full of honey. I do not feed, so I can only imagine that we will have tons of swarms this year. Some folks still feed and, based on reports and other second-hand sources, “fed bees” seem to swarm a lot earlier than my hives. I am guessing the first swarms have happened and it will ramp up over the next week or two. On that note, I made sure all of my Nucs received plenty of honey. Three or four years ago, I lost several Nucs due to starvation (lack of honey at initial creation.) I hope to not repeat that mistake!