Spring nucs

Ordering opens to Door County Beekeepers Club members first, then to everyone else if any are left. Numbers are small and will stay small. I would rather sell fewer nucs to people I can answer the phone for in July than move volume.

Bought locally, a nuc does not spend three days in a truck.

Three types, in increasing order of what they cost me to produce and what they are worth to you. All of them are five frames, and all of them are picked up here.

Type one — five-frame nuc, purchased queen

Built here in the spring around a mated, laying queen from a commercial breeder.

Frames	Five. Brood in all stages, stores, and adhering bees. One of the five may be foundation or only partially drawn.
Queen	Purchased, mated, and laying at pickup. Source chosen by the club — see below.
Housing	Cardboard or plastic nuc box, for transport only.
Price	To be set.

Be plain about what this is. A purchased queen is a purchased queen. This is not my line and it is not Door County survivor stock, and I am not going to tell you it is. What you get is a correctly made colony, assembled here, on drawn comb, already functioning — and someone ten miles away who will pick up the phone when something looks wrong in June.

Where the queens come from is the club's call. Rather than pick a breeder myself and ask you to take my word for it, I would rather the Door County Beekeepers Club decide together which source we want to run. Everyone can see what is being ordered and why, and nobody has to wonder.

There is a second reason to do it that way, and it is the better one. If a group of us start the season on the same queen source, we can compare what happens — how they build, how they winter, what the mite loads look like in August across a dozen yards on the same peninsula. One beekeeper's opinion of a queen breeder is close to worthless. Twelve beekeepers running the same stock and writing down what they see is worth something, and it is the kind of thing a club is actually for.

That decision has to be made in winter, because queens get ordered long before anyone needs them.

If you have done your own reading and want something specific, say so. If there is a breeder or a line you want to try — Carniolan, Saskatraz, a particular queen producer whose stock you have read about — I can order her and build your nuc around her. It has to be worked out early enough to get on that breeder's list, and the queen is at cost, but there is no reason you should have to take the club's choice if you have a reason for wanting a different one. Trying something and watching what it does is how anybody learns anything here.

Type two — five-frame nuc, my queen

The same colony in every respect, built around a queen I grafted myself from stock I selected after watching it perform in this yard, and open mated here.

Frames	Five. Brood in all stages, stores, and adhering bees. One of the five may be foundation or only partially drawn.
Queen	Grafted from proven stock, evaluated in this apiary. Open mated in this yard.
Housing	Cardboard or plastic nuc box, for transport only.
Price	To be set.

What open mated means, and does not mean. Her drones came from whatever is flying within a few miles of here, which is largely my own colonies and whatever else is in northern Door County. That is not a controlled cross and I will not pretend otherwise. What it does mean is that both sides of her parentage are local, and the mother's line is one I chose because I watched it winter and produce here rather than because a catalog said so.

Type three — overwintered nuc

Made the previous summer, built up as a unit, and wintered in that configuration. It has already done the one thing that matters most at this latitude: it came through a Door County winter.

Frames	Five, on fully drawn comb, with a cluster that came through winter intact.
Queen	Grafted here and open mated after the summer solstice. She heads the nuc through late summer, autumn and winter — so the spring you buy her in is her first build-up.
Availability	Few, and not every year. These are made from surplus and there is rarely much surplus.
Price	To be set — meaningfully more than type one or two.

A proven queen who has not yet been spent. That timing is the point of the whole thing. Mated after the solstice, she builds the nuc up in late summer, makes the winter bees, and holds a cluster through five months of cold — which is the hardest test there is at this latitude, and she has already passed it. But she has never run a spring. She has not made a honey crop or been pushed through a build-up. So what you are getting is a queen who has proven the one thing that is hard to prove, with her whole productive life still in front of her.

Why it costs more. An overwintered nuc has been fed, treated, monitored and carried through five months of winter before it is sold, and it occupied equipment the whole time. It is also proof rather than a promise: a spring nuc might winter, and this one already did. If you are trying to build stock that belongs here, this is the one to buy.

Come look at it first

You are welcome to come to the yard and inspect the nuc you are buying before you take it home. Open it up, look at the brood pattern, find the queen, see how much they have stored. If you are new and not sure what you are looking at, that is exactly the point — I will go through it with you frame by frame, and you will leave knowing what a good one looks like.

I would rather you saw the colony and knew it was what you wanted than took my word for it and wondered later.

Getting them into the hive

Moving five frames into a full-size box is not difficult, but it is much easier to do once alongside somebody than to read about. If you want help with your first one, say so when you order.

Before you pick it up

• Have the hive ready. Bottom board, box, frames, cover, and a stand, set up in its spot before pickup day. Not the night after.
• A nuc box is temporary housing. Cardboard and plastic boxes are for the drive home. Transfer into the full-size box within a day or two — a nuc outgrows five frames fast in May, and a colony that runs out of room will leave.
• Bring a strap and a screen or plug. Pickup happens in the evening or early morning with the flyers home.

Terms

These terms are under construction. What follows is a starting point rather than a policy — I would rather post a draft and be argued with than take deposits against nothing. Whatever you order under will be in writing before money changes hands.

Deposit	Half at order, balance at pickup. The deposit is what reserves the colony.
Pickup window	A date range rather than a date, set in spring once I can see what the bees are doing. You get two weeks' notice of the actual day.
If spring runs late	The window moves. Nucs go out when they are ready, not when the calendar says. A late nuc is a working colony; an early one is a gamble with your money.
If a colony fails before pickup	You get the next one made, or your deposit back in full — your choice. Nobody gets handed a weak colony to fill an order.
If you cancel	Before April, deposit returned. After that it depends on whether I can place the colony elsewhere. Say so early and it is usually fine.
Inspect it first	You are welcome to come to the yard and open the nuc you are buying before you take it. Look at the brood, find the queen, see the stores. I will walk through it with you and answer anything you want to ask.
Once it leaves	A colony you have inspected and accepted is yours from that point. What happens to it afterward depends on weather, forage, and management I have no part in, and I cannot be responsible for that.

None of that is legal drafting and I am not a lawyer. It is a plain statement of what I intend to do, written down so nobody has to remember a conversation from February.