nuc sales agreement
1 - 20 of 31 Posts
Joined
·
1,314 Posts
:thumbsup:
Joined
·
8,290 Posts
Be sure to show her the nuc. Yes there's a laying queen. Yes there's good population and enough food. No there aren't any brood diseases. Get an inspection certificate from your state inspector.
Joined
·
1,250 Posts
Mike has it with inspection certificate. That way if there is anything that is wrong you can show that they have be inspected before sale. Bee inspectors:bus
Joined
·
138 Posts
I can kinda see her side, if she has been taken advantage in the past. We've got some shady nuc sellers around here. One fella in Victor New York passes off April splits with bought queens. He has the customer drop off the hives in February and then pick it up at the end of May. One guy I know went to get his over wintered nuc and there were two queen cages in the grass, hmm. Last year on Craigslist he got his " lines" from Don the Fat Bee Man. This year he is using Micheal Palmer Queens. Gotta be careful in this racket!
Joined
·
6,558 Posts
I believe an inspection certificate does not guarantee that every nuc has been inspected. I was inspected for sales of bees and it involved only a random sample of bees and comb in the apiary. Many sellers make a check for a laying queen some time previous to you picking it up but once it leaves their hands it is at your risk.
Frank, it is the same here. An apiary inspection is required before one can sell nucs or live bees and comb, but only 25% of my apiary was actually inspected for disease and mites. I get a certificate of health for the entire apiary and an inspection sticker for each hive present at the time. I am a little gun shy at the moment with these inspections. Last year we killed a queen.
Joined
·
1,901 Posts
Are you saying that there is something wrong with using purchased queens in the making up of nucs?
Just trying to understand your comment.
Joined
·
2,963 Posts
pull the nuc w/overwintered queen, add a bought queen to OG hive, requeen later in the summer ? makes $$ and cents
"2 queen cages in the grass" ****ing indeed for a large operation, but yes I get the point..
the "He has the customer drop off the hives in February and then pick it up at the end of May" is a huge red flag... who lets random equipment come and go in to there yard?
"2 queen cages in the grass" ****ing indeed for a large operation, but yes I get the point..
the "He has the customer drop off the hives in February and then pick it up at the end of May" is a huge red flag... who lets random equipment come and go in to there yard?
Agree 100%. Good way to intoduce AFB or EFB into your apairy.
I thought we all agreed on the definition of an "overwintered" nuc. Pretty hard to have a spring queen in the nuc unless she is last year's spring queen. Should be a post summer's soltice queen that has survived the winter with her brood and bees. Also should be available much sooner than May. Mine are scheduled for late March delivery and are all pre-sold.
In our part of the world, spring nucs are sold as 4 frames units. If I was going to make nucs from a colony, here is how I would do it. I start by walking out to the double deep wintered colony carrying 2 4 frame boxes. I pick thru the frames of the wintered colony, each of the boxes gets 3 frames with brood, one with pollen / honey. Bees are shaken into the bottom box off of all the frames except the one with the queen. Frame with queen goes into one of the two 4 frame boxes. Now excluder goes on top of the deep left in place with all the bees, and the two 4 frames go above the excluder. Lid over those.
Come back the next day with two caged queens. Take two nucs off the top, one is wintered queen with bees that are her offspring, and brood in all stages, pretty much the definition of a wintered nuc. The other 4 frame box has brood in all stages, gets one of the caged queens. The bottom box now gets the other caged queen.
Net result, one wintered nuc to sell, one spring nuc to sell, and the leftover bees in a box with a queen, they can build up a colony over the summer to do it all again next spring. In a couple more days the queens will be out of the cages, we go thru pulling out empty cages and confirm there are eggs. At that point, nucs are ready to go. If we were rushed when pulling cages, you may well see a couple empty queen cages in the grass, but they will end up in a pocket or bucket by the end of the day.
Joined
·
1,250 Posts
Really queen cages on the ground. Is this how beekeeping is done now at days. Most my bee yards are 50+ years old. I'm one that still opens my hives up and see what is going inside.:scratch:
I sell a lot of nucs and have had less then 5% problems over the years. I feel that's not bad having to deal with some many that don't know what they are doing.
Joined
·
138 Posts
This fella has his hives at his house and his nuc yard is at a farm maybe five miles away. I've bought from him also. At first I was miffed because at the lack of bees in the nucs and how much I had to do to get them built up. But now I realize that I wouldn't have learned as much if I had it easier with proper nucs. I started reading all the material I could find on bee nutrition and the symptoms of improper nutrition. Gotta find the positives.
Consider how much more difficult it would be to deal with this purchaser. I rented a house to a woman who took an hour to read a boiler plate rental agreement. She was a pain in the neck. You might be better to tell her to take it or leave it. What if she is dissatisfied?Then you have to deal with her again.
1 - 20 of 31 Posts
Join the discussion
Join now to ask and comment!