When given a row of NUCS TO CHOOSE FROM, what do you look for?

[southeastflorida]

It's funny, I get 2 nucs,
and get one very strong colony and one very slow build colony,
with everthing else remaining the same.
Not the breeders fault.

I now look for a lot more bees, comming and going.

[G3farms]

Just a thought but you could lift them to get the heaviest one also.

[Honeycomb]

I agree about looking for more coming and going. I'm just a beginner but I recently made a nuc from one of my hives and it doesn't have a lot of foragers yet. I can tell it is vulnerable because there are lots of nurse bees and now and then I see a robber wanting to get in. There are some guards but I can see how it can get stressful if unwelcome bees are trying to get in and there are not a lot of foragers to bring home the bacon.

[Fuzzy]

I would have soon swapped one frame of fully capped brood from the strong nuc with one from the weaker one. It is amazing how much difference a frame of newly hatched bees make to the progress of hive development.

[brac]

I given a choice, I would go for maxium drift, If the prevailing wind is from the north, take the southern most NUC. That is assuming it is the end of the row. Chances are it will have the highest population.

[fish_stix]

Why don't you just open the dang things; you'll be able to see immediately which are strong and which are weak! This is not rocket science.

[alpha6]

The heaviest one are the worst ones. This is because they are gathering honey and pollen because they have no brood to take care of because most likely they rejected the queen from the start.

Open the lid and look in it. Pull the center frame. Upon opening it you should see bees filled in the middle three frame on new nucs and on all five on somewhat older nucs. When you pull the frame look for a good solid brood pattern. Don't see this, move on the the next nuc.