So today is the first snow day of 2012 and the bees are all tucked away for winter and what better time to write up a brief summary for 2011 and how I got here. I started in spring of 2011 with two packages of bees. Right off, the queen of one of the packages failed and I spent several months trying to get the hive queen right without success. However the other hive took off an I was able to splits from it in August to make several nucs (mini-hives) and raised 2 new queens. I also adopted two local stock queens form a beekeeper in late August and set them up in nucs with bees from my good hive. Then unexpectedly my main hive managed to get to a point where it started making queen cells due to honey breaking up the brood nest and I then made another nuc in later September time frame with my original queen. This started my winter off with 1-hive and 5 nucs.
My original hive was called the Geeks, when they split I now call that box the New Geeks and the other Old Geeks. The hive that failed is called the Frats. I rebuilt the Frats as a nuc with one of the local queens, and they have stayed on the smaller side and show more Carniolian traits. Then the three nucs are just ABC. Nuc A is a daughter of the Geeks, and they haven't taken much supplemental food and they are staying small. Nuc B is another daughter of the Geeks, and they built up nicely and are filling the nuc. Nuc C is the other adopted local queen and their box is full as well. Nuc C shows the most Italian traits with later starting in the day.
All hives were checked mid-Dec on a random nice day and were in good shape. Nuc A and B got sugar filled comb.
