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Thread: Nucs for sale, ready to go anytime

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trog View Post
    Glad you said that, Gavin. I wouldn't want folk to think I was mis-selling nucs because I don't have them all ready by April!!
    Hi
    ok when in rome,, as the saying goes. I have 26 colonies now, of which I will keep 6-8 of those that survive the winter. The rest will be sold on before or during the dandelion bloom. That would be the normal way of doing things here - so whatever I sell has been proven to overwinter - the risks and responsibility for treating for varroa and winter feeding are mine, but noone can come back at me blaming me for their winter losses/varroa infestation/poor quality queens...

  2. #12
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    And so not for the first time are standards higher in Germany. If more people would raise colonies for sale we might get to this position here too. Alternatively if we up our game regarding management for overwinter survival we wouldn't be trying to fill empty boxes as well as raise nucs for sale. These Paynes polystyrene nucs seem to be good for overwintering.

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    My aim next year is to start raising nucs for overwintering with a view to selling them in the spring for much the same reasons that Calum cites.

    It seemed to me that if I could come into spring with a couple of overwintered Nucs I'd be beating people off with a stick to have them. Early as wanted and having a proven, overwintered queen.

    I'm not convinced that I'll stick with the poly full hives at the moment, but was thinking that poly Nucs wouldn't be a bad idea for overwintering though all of my cedar nucs came through winter this year.

  4. #14
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I have 11 nucs with 2012 grafted queens from my best colonies made up so far, all in 7 frame correx boxes although some are dummied down to 4 or 5 frames
    Most of them are strong already and should have no problem going through winter.

    I have rigged up some slot shelving at the outside end of my shed and I can fit 16 nucs in 4 rows of 4 on it so the plan is to overwinter them all there.
    They will be pushed together and will have insulation on top.
    I have converted the correx nucs to OMFs.
    Photo to come when all are in place.
    Half of them are at my allotment at the moment.

  5. #15
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    The weather's scuppered the plan for this year. We've tinkered with queen rearing, messed most of it up and the weather has hit a couple of colonies hard so we've been sorting those out and getting rid of some bad tempered queens this year. I still hope to go into winter with 6 colonies of some description and add more stuff to the ongoing "Next season..." list.

  6. #16
    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nellie View Post
    My aim next year is to start raising nucs for overwintering with a view to selling them in the spring for much the same reasons that Calum cites.
    A great plan to generate an extra cash input at the 'quiet' end of the year which anyone with good bees and husbandry skills could follow.

    So often the extra cost of overwintering is given as the reason for importing early queens but on a small scale for our own use and to supply a few locally there's no real cost when balanced against the alternative of not overwintering a couple of 'spares' and then finding our single colony queenless in the Spring.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nellie View Post
    I'm not convinced that I'll stick with the poly full hives at the moment, but was thinking that poly Nucs wouldn't be a bad idea for overwintering though all of my cedar nucs came through winter this year.
    Interesting thoughts and I would like to hear more of your thinking on this subject, but perhaps this isn't the right thread. I've no real experience of poly beyond mating nucs but as my post on the home made mating nuc thread earlier this week showed, even in this area I'm looking towards making my own in wood and will be putting ten into winter alongside eight poly versions. They've already proven themselves as suitable for mating the queens (no difference to the poly boxes) in a rather dreary summer so now it's just a case of how they perform over winter and more importantly next Spring. As Mike Palmer is keen on saying:

    it's not the box, it's what's in the box.


  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
    So often the extra cost of overwintering is given as the reason for importing early queens but on a small scale for our own use and to supply a few locally there's no real cost when balanced against the alternative of not overwintering a couple of 'spares' and then finding our single colony queenless in the Spring.
    I agree with you there - its always better to have more reserves than you need. I feed my new colonies on ten frames 7kg of syrup (I'm never going to make my own, too much faff though its cheaper) thats 5,83€ feeding and varroa (not even the price of a glass and a hlaf of honey!), I paid 44€ for formic acid 60% and Oxalic acid and sugar preps for my varroa treatments - enough for +30 colonies. that works out at 1,70€ for varroa treatment /26 colonies - so 7,53€ or about six GB pounds (not even the price of a glass and a hlaf of honey!). So I'll get 80 -100 pounds for my outlay of 7,53€ + 20€ (frames and wax) or have deep reserves in case of heavy losses. simples.

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