"I sold out this year early at $180 and I'm rethinking if nucs are even worth my time. I can better then double my money if I run them all for honey. Honey demand is crazy already this year"..
Or you could run your nucs for honey too. At the end of April each year I sell 5 frame nucs made up from my 4 over 4 over-wintered nucs in my 5 frame boxes that people return. I generally sell the over-wintered queen with the new nuc and introduce a new Russian or VSH queen to the remaining 4 frame nuc. Generally within 3 weeks I'm ready to add another 4 frame box to get the nuc back to a double again. Right about now these same nucs are capping the last of a third 4 frame deep box that I introduced with coated Ritecell 15 days ago. Yesterday I inspected 22 double nucs and pulled quite a fair share of capped deep frames of honey all from the nucs. I generally then extract the deep frames right away and give them back to the nucs to continue with the new flow. Cost wise I think its well worth raising and managing nucleus colonies. My typical payback on making up 5 frame nucs to sell from my double nucs is:
Sell 5 Frame nuc: I generally do 50 or so, as its just me and I'm more a part time beekeeper these days: Sell for $325.00 ea. with VSH Queen. In case your wondering I usually borrow a frame of honey, pollen or comb from my production colonies to make it 5 frames. They don't miss it. And in case your wondering about the cost of the nucs; its the going rate in my area.
So I have sold my original nuc for $325.00 and need to substract $30.00 for a new queen to keep the nuc sustainable, so I made $295.00
This week many of these nucs gave up 34 lbs of spring honey that I extract and sell for $10.00 a 1 lb. jar. Minus the Jar and labels around a buck, so I again made $306.00 .
It appears that these same nucs will again gather and store at least another box of 4 frames deeps ready to extract at the end of July. Yup that's another $306.00
So I had a nuc that rebounded from an initial split and went on to make 65 lbs. of surplus. This is of course the original nuc that I still have, even though I sold half of the original nuc in the spring.
So this end game nuc generated an income of $907.00 from April to end of July by selling bees, brood, great queen, and 8 frames of deep honey. But the best part of it for me is that I still keep the nuc to do it again next spring.
Yes there is cost of production, my time, efforts etc. But all in all, I find my nuc production and management very cost effective.