Spring nucs are a good way to split your colonies, suppress swarming, and otherwise manage your spring bees. I like to make nucs from pre-swarm hives on or after the frost date, which for Virginia is mid-April. This creates new hives from locally overwintered queens that are hopefully well adapted to living in our area.
One drawback of this approach is that the queen doesn’t always get mated, and you may lose a couple nucs. A safer approach is to purchase queens from a breeder, although then of course the queen may not be local to the area and therefore her daughter workers are not either. Both methods work well, it is a matter of preference.
For my local approach, it takes four to six weeks for the colony to get established, presuming the queen successfully mates. For my area, with our frost date around April 15, this has the nucs ready around Memory Day at the end of May. For the nucs I sold this year, I purchase a plywood nuc box from Dadant for my sales. New beekeepers don’t always realize how valuable a nuc box like this is for future years (as long as they paint it!), but we know.
The picture here shows a deep nuc sealed and ready for pick up.
May you prosper and find honey.
Bees with eeb 