So you want to grow your apiary or maybe you’ve decided to take the plunge and become a beekeeper. Maybe you already are a beekeeper and just suffered some tough winter losses and now have to replace 1 or more colonies. What do you do? Do you import packages from somewhere in the South and expect them to immediately acclimate to a new climate? If they survive summer, will they overwinter? Or do you try to find a local breeder who raises quality queens and overwinters nucs? Hmmmm…. what to do?
A Package vs a Local Nuc
Here comes my rant…I am ABSOLUTELY NOT a fan of packages. Yes, they do have a place in beekeeping (commercial beekeepers adding hundreds of colonies or areas where nucs simply are not available) but for my money, give me an overwintered nuc with a proven queen every time. Unlike a package where the bees and the unproven queen have been together less than a week, are completely unrelated, have just been transported many hundreds of miles and may bring hive beetles or other unwanted problems North, an overwintered nuc is a small viable colony, where the resident queen has been with the colony since the previous Summer. Come Spring, she is the mother of all of the bees in the colony and is laying across 2-3 frames. A frame of honey with pollen plus an open frame of drawn comb complete a 5-frame nuc. It is a completely functioning colony, has genetics that are proven to survive a winter and will rapidly build up in the Spring. In fact, you have to be careful with nucs as, if you are not prepared, they may rapidly outgrow their new hive and swarm. When I hive a nuc, I always add another hive body with a mixture of drawn comb and fresh foundation. This gives the queen a place to continue to lay and the bees will quickly draw out the fresh foundation. Meanwhile, you will have to nurse a package all summer long.
Support Your Local Breeders
If you buy a nuc, make sure you select a reputable breeder who raises the queens as well as overwinters the nucs. As with anything, there are beekeepers who sell “nucs” that they actually made in the Spring which may really be the equivalent of a package in a small hive body. Your local breeder is your best bet for providing you a high quality nuc. If you are not sure who to trust, ask your club members. Another option is raise your own nucs. It’s not hard and is inexpensive when compared with the options.
Creating Your Own Insurance Policy
Mike Palmer is beekeeping’s best known advocate of local, overwintered nucs. One of his main premises is to take one of your poorer producing hives, split it into several nucs and add a good queen to each. The original bees will help raise the first generation of brood from the new queen. You will then have 3 or 4 new nucs with good queens, young bees and will not have hurt your honey production by splitting a productive hive.
I have done this for 3 years and it absolutely works. This year, I ended up loosing 4 hives that would have cost me approximately $360 to replace with packages or possibly $500-600 if I purchased 4 nucs. Instead, late last June, I split two of my non-productive hives into 7 nucs. I purchased 4 queens and added them to 4 of the nucs. I took a frame of brood from one of my other productive hives and put it in a queen castle. I then took 3 of the cells they made and after placing them each in a different nuc, let the bees raise them. I went into Winter with 7 strong nucs. One nuc died from Nosema and another from what I believe was queen failure. That left me 5 nucs this Spring to replace my 4 dead hives plus a spare to add a new colony. Total cost was $100 for the 4 queens I purchased and I ended up with 5 new hives of local, overwintered bees that are currently pulling in pollen like there is no tomorrow. I know the genetics, I have brought nothing foreign into our community, they have low mite counts and are on track to be productive this year–all for a whopping $20/hive. Now how do packages sound?
Farm Update
The orchard area is now cleared and I’m starting to put up firewood for 2014. Looks like we will have about 3 years worth of wood. As soon as the orchard area dries out a bit, we’ll start on the stump removal and grading. Hopefully starting the barn within the next 30 days.
New Hampsha' Bees 
Absolutely right on. Why do we pay to import their problems in to our apiaries? We need to swap home bred New Hampshire survivor queens amongst ourselves. We are the problem and the solution.
Exactly! Local clubs need to support members who want to develop into breeders. Once they have an established breeding program, breeder queens can be swapped with other clubs to keep genetic diversity in our apiaries. Clubs can then help by suggesting new beekeepers buy nucs from the local breeders rather than providing packages for their new beekeeper classes.
John
John: Take it a step further, save your $100 and make your own queens? That’s the key to sustainable. And then we will never have to import a box of “bred-for-almond” bees, and the problems that come with them, in to NH again.
We have to be a bit careful. Sustainable requires maintaining genetic diversity. Several studies show how inbred bees have become so a local breeding program must consider maintaining a diverse gene pool. Of course, the gene pool is all about the quality of the drones mating with a virgin queen in the drone congregation area. The 4 queens I purchased came from the private apiary of the lab manager at one of the top entomology departments in the US. I met her at an EAS meeting, really liked her queen rearing program and wanted to add some of their traits to my apiary. I am not surrounded by too many other beekeepers so adding these queens will hopefully increase the diversity of the DGA.
Indeed. I believe that I have some of her genetics in my yards too, which is, of course, why we all need to assemble our apiaries from diverse sources, breed a few queens, maintain a healthy and diverse drone population, and swap our queens regionally. Giving a few well-bred NH survivor queens to responsible beekeepers in our area is worth far more to all of us than the $25@ we can pocket for one of our queens. And who knows, in a few years, perhaps we can all go back to catching feral swarms.
Hoping for a great nectar flow, warm regards.