This picture shows Mary and Dave making additional winter nucs. So far we have put together (25) winter nucs. We modeled our boxes after Kirk Webster’s setup in Middlebury, Vermont. Kirk begins preparing his winter nucs near the end of June. Since we are about 6 hours south of Kirk’s location we begin our winter nuc preparation near the end of July. Most of our winter nucs will be (2) four frame hives in a separated brood super. We have been taking our strong summer mating nucs with their recently grafted and mated queen to build our winter nucs. In August and September we will feed these hives with freshly made sugar syrup. Then in October will wrap the hives with 30 felt roofing paper and take off the feeders. Mary had grafted (400) queens this summer and sold some to local beekeepers and also used these queens for our out yard hives. This summer we were running about (60) mating nucs at one time after each grafting. The lower picture shows one of our marked new queens.
