a one-day seminar offered by Bucks Beekeepers

Knowing how and when to make splits and nucs is critical for sustainable beekeeping. Learn to control your honey bee colonies for what your needs are. And don’t allow the bees to decide for you based upon what they want to do. If you can over-winter a colony of honey bees and are going to optimize your success as a beekeeper - you need to understand how to successfully make splits and nucs. Correct management practices applied in a timely manner are an essential element of successful beekeeping.

• Don’t lose the money, time, and effort you put into your colonies when they swarm.
• Make up for winter losses.
• Don’t lose that extra special queen and keep her in your apiary.
• Create a back-up spare colony for when it’s needed.
• Don’t be stuck without a queen if you accidentally crush the one you love.
• Use swarm cells to your advantage.
• Improve your apiary with queen cells grafted from select genetic stock.

Have fun and learn the science, techniques, and time tested tips from master beekeeper Dr. Vincent Aloyo and Mark Antunes on how to take advantage of honey bee biology by making it work in your favor. Make splits and nucs that will benefit you and your apiary this season. With 75 years of combined beekeeping experience and having taught beekeeping to thousands, Dr. Aloyo and Mark Antunes provide a dynamic class loaded with scientific knowledge, first-hand experience, and practical hands on skills that you can apply this spring.

The class is six hours and will cover the following topics plus others brought up by students.

• The seasonal timing of building nucs.
• Building nucs suitable for the season.
• How to make early nucs that can be honey producers this season.
• How to select the frames and resources to make the best nuc.
• Building nucs with mated queens, virgin queens, and queen cells.
• How to make early nucs that can be honey producers this season.
• Making nucs for swarm control before swarm activity starts and after it has begun
• Making nucs from colonies that have swarmed.
• The biology of swarming.
• How to introduce a queen.
• Maximizing queen acceptance.
• How to introduce a queen cell.
• How to avoid crushing the queen.
• How to avoid damaging queen cells.
• Harvesting swarm cells for nuc production.
• Varroa control in the parent colony with nuc production.
• Varroa control in nucs with mated queens and queen cells.
• How to increase colony numbers and make up for losses.
• Using nucs as a brood factory to support full size colonies.
• The Mike Palmer method of nuc production.
• The three methods of making splits.
• Feeding nucs year round.
• Overwintering nucs.