Context

Brothers Glenn and Wes Card run one of the largest and most respected beekeeping operations in the country, managing over 30,000 hives across a multi-regional outfit that spans honey production, queen breeding, pollination services, and a sprawling nuc program. The operation is split between Merrimack Valley Apiaries in the Northeast, led by Glenn, and Evergreen Honey in Louisiana, led by Wes. Merrimack alone runs around 12,000 hives, while Evergreen manages about 20,000, not including their nuc program. 

Real-time brood status on 12,000 nucs

The Card brothers’ nuc operation started in the early 2000s as a way to make use of surplus splits after a decline in apple pollination. What began as a side hustle quickly grew into a major arm of the business, with this year’s output reaching nearly 9,000 units delivered—8,000 of those within just seven weeks. Customers now order through their dedicated site, thebfarm.com, which supports pickups at five locations in the Northeast and two in Louisiana, with expansion on the horizon. They also use a portion of their nucs internally, to reinforce other parts of their business. 

According to Glenn, with up to five crews working across different yards, it’s crucial to know which nucs are ready for sale, which are still growing, and where the next wave will come from. “To run the nuc operation, we need day-to-day information,” Glenn explains. Their system revolves around three core data points: queen status (accepted or queenless) and brood development (measured in frames: one, two, or three). A nuc with three frames of brood and five frames of bees, Glenn notes, “is on the verge of exploding,” making precise timing essential.

Using Nectar, the team can see real-time updates on the maturity of thousands of nucs, allowing them to predict supply a week or more in advance. “If you didn’t know what was coming in from the field every day, you’d be losing your mind,” Glenn says. “That’s how you end up with an inconsistent product.” But with hive-level data, the Cards can direct crews on exactly which yards to visit, based on the current number of frames of brood. “Say I’ve got 1,000 nucs to ship this week,” Glenn says. “If I know I’ve got 700 twos, they’ll be threes next week. The ones will be twos or threes, too.” So by closely monitoring the real-time status of their brood, they can plan where to go and what to expect. “That’s what keeps the whole thing running smooth,” Glenn says. Predictability, he says, is crucial for business planning and operating at scale. 

We’re finally able to trust our hive numbers. That’s a milestone. And it’s only going to get better as Nectar keeps improving.

Wes Card

Identifying problem zones—in advance—with historical data

As Glenn puts it, “Nectar gives us information that isn’t as easy to see on paper.” This is especially true when it comes to understanding how the actions taken in a hive’s past influence its present and future outcomes. One critical example is what Nectar calls “pass-through mortality rate”: the ability to see how each location is correlated with mortality—even after bees have been moved. This visibility has helped the Cards identify consistent problem zones—yards or regions where hives underperform year after year, whether in their own yards or as part of pollination contracts. “The more we are able to analyze,” Glenn says, “the more you'll be able to pick out, year to year, if people are repeat offenders. “You can talk to your growers and if this becomes a consistent issue, you certainly can leave certain growers behind because they're just out there, damaging your bees.”

This kind of analysis also enables more informed decision-making on a per-hive basis. Selling thousands of nucs annually, Glenn says there’s always a portion that struggle to requeen or develop properly. Nectar helps identity these hives, analyze the cause of their poor performance, and inform the decision of whether to fix the problems or not. At a certain point, trying to salvage a weak nuc becomes economically inefficient, Glenn says. Nectar helps flag those hives before time and resources are wasted. “If you have bad outcomes on a certain practice or input, a system like Nectar is going to point out beforehand that there's a correlation.”

It’s a big step up, Glenn says, especially compared to their old system—pen-and-paper forms and spreadsheets, fueled by late-night data entry sessions. “Before, we’d spend two to three hours just processing paper sheets from multiple crews,” Glenn recalls. “If you were behind, you could be days out of date. Now, it’s all immediate.” That real-time feedback loop has not only improved accuracy but also unlocked years of historical context that were previously buried in notebooks and spreadsheets. Without a system like Nectar, Glenn says, you might remember a bad result one year—but by the second or third time it happens, the pattern is often lost. Now, the software helps them flag these correlations in advance, and adjust accordingly—whether tweaking treatment and feeding protocols, or optimizing yard locations. 

Manage Crews with Real-Time Feedback

According to Glenn, Nectar has also become essential for managing his people. “Day to day, you're seeing what people are doing,” he explains, which is extremely helpful. “We're moving toward being able to assign tasks to specific crews and monitor their performance in a real, analytical way.” With Nectar, he can identify inefficiencies early—before a problem drags through an entire season—and offer targeted support to crews or individuals who need more instruction. This shift toward data-informed management has helped make their entire operation more agile and accountable.

This is particularly important, Glenn says, for managing pollination logistics, which span multiple states and hundreds of contracts. Glenn can input detailed instructions for each job, from gate code to use once on the property to the order of drops. “They just go on the app, the name I gave them pops up with the contract, and it navigates them straight to the site,” Glenn says. Crews can scan in their progress using RFID tags, and the system updates in real time. That means Glenn wakes up each morning knowing exactly what was completed the day before, allowing him to plan the day’s dispatch without needing to chase down information.

This visibility is also critical for customer communication. Growers often want updates on where exactly hives have been placed or when the next truckload will arrive. With Nectar, Glenn can give them clear, accurate answers on the spot—without needing to check in with crews in the field. “It makes everything a lot clearer,” he says. “You’re not wondering what was completed. It’s right there in the app.” While there was a learning curve for workers, most crews adapted quickly once they saw the value. “There’s a little frustration at first,” Glenn admits, “but if you spend an hour or two walking them through it, they get 90% of it. A week or two in the field, and they’re rolling.”

The Road Ahead: Turning long-term data into decisions

Moving into their third season with Nectar, the Card brothers are increasingly focused on using their accumulated data to make evidence-based decisions. “One-offs don’t tell you much,” Glenn says. “You need multiple seasons of data to really establish a pattern.” Their immediate priority is to analyze environmental factors and yard performance over time—asking questions like: Are certain yards consistently more productive? Do some locations yield better queen acceptance rates or stronger hive growth year after year? With enough longitudinal data, they hope to isolate the conditions that produce the most resilient bees.

For Wes, the future lies in genetics. “I think genetics is at the forefront, breeding is at the forefront,” he says. “We can breed our way out of a lot of these problems better than we can treat with chemicals.” The more rigorously they can track genetic lines and correlate them with outcomes in the field, the more precisely they can improve queen acceptance rates—a key cost driver across their operation. With better data, they hope to understand not just what works, but why, turning instinct into strategy. Ultimately, both brothers envision a system where outcome probabilities can be assigned to actions, helping them anticipate the downstream effects of every choice they make—from daily decisions like yard location and treatment protocols to more environmental factors like weather and air quality.

“The fundamentals aren’t changing,” Wes says. “But tools like Nectar make them more accessible, more visible, more usable.” The future isn’t about sitting in the shop and staring at spreadsheets—it’s about using data as a lens through which to see the landscape more clearly, and act on it more precisely. “We’re finally able to trust our hive numbers,” Wes says. “That’s a milestone. And it’s only going to get better as Nectar keeps improving.”

Nectar has the ability to track data and analyze it and give us information to make business decisions that aren't as easy to see on paper.

Glenn Card