It is that time of the year again. We are rolling out our pre-sales for our Nucleus hives. Last year we sold out in about 4 to 6 weeks. Normally we plan for all the Nuc hives to be ready between the 3rd and 4th week of May. Last year due to the weather we were splitting the hives between the rain storms. It would be nice for a couple of hours and then it would downpour. It makes a person feel alive (and a bit wet). lol. Dianne and Terri helped me this year. For 2 days we started splitting the hives at 9:00am and finished around 5:00pm. From there the queenless nuc hives were brought to the home yard. I started moving them from 8:00pm to 12:30am. . All our splits we try to have made up between the 2nd and 3rd week of May. We like to add the queens and have them bond with the new workers for a good 7 to 10 days. This way when you get the new hive a big portion of the capped brood has hatched and the queen has gone and laid multiple frames of new brood. This also eleminates the worry that the queen is not accepted. If there are any issues of queen acceptace or the hive not producing I would like to address it before it goes to it's new home. From the 5 frames (NUC hive) they will have to be transfered to a 9 or 10 frame box upon pickup due to the size of the colonies. It is very exciting. We are also looking forward to our queen rearing season. We have a couple of main bee lines that are completly amazing. In our area beekeeping time seems so short.