Meyer Bees local nuc with mated and laying marked Meyer Bees queen, 2-3 frames brood, 1-2 frames honey/pollen. These Meyer Bees nucs have daughter queens grafted from colonies that successfully survive the 2024 winter into 2025. All nucs consist of 5 deep frames. Once local queen rearing can happen (depending on the weather) we produce daughter queens from these overwintered colonies queens and introduce them to splits of our local colonies. We then allow the queens to mate with local survivor stock drones from overwintered colonies placed about 1 mile away in a ring around our apiary. Once mated the nucs are allowed to produce several brood cycles before they are available for pickup. This eliminates issues with early queen acceptance, supersedure, etc. and provides you with a 100% accepted queen along with her own brood. Some beekeepers refer to these colonies as survivor stock bees since they are being produced from colonies that have shown adaptability / success in surviving Chicago winters and have strong buildup in the early spring. They would be considered “Meyer Mutts” and are a good blend of genetic traits. For pickup at our Minooka, IL apiary.
Note that these Meyer Bees local nucs are typically available a bit later in the season than the other nucs we have as the queens we build them from are reliant on us having our local queen rearing yard up and running for the season. Over the past few years this has not happened until the mid to end end of May due to the cold weather we have had in April and early May. Nuc buildup times are typically a few weeks after queens are available so they would not be ready until the end of June or early July. If you are looking for earlier nucs consider these other races of nucs we have available.
