Cost of beekeeping and poly nucs

[Finman]

After 1987 is not allways
Winter sugar or total amount of sugar from september to april?

Our bees need needs sugar in May too. They do not get enough honey from willows. I can say that with 60 years experience. My willows start to bloom in the first of May.

Our snow cover expire day is usually 15.4.
And the reason of date is the angle of sunshine. The sun melts the snow, not global warming.

Greetings from Helsinki, latitude 60 degree.

 

[Amari]

Our household is glad we've got both an Aldi and a Lidl within easy reach. I'm banished to browse the middle isles and the management gets the household stuff. Apparently my selection of food brands is unacceptable. I'm not as bad as my neighbour who apparently takes stuff out of the trolley if he considers it too dear and puts cheaper versions in. He's been banned from going in now and has to wait in the car.

Far better strategy is never to accompany management. The weekly shop used to be one of several opportunities for SWMBO to have her own space, just as beekeeping is mine.
Actually, Covid has changed all this; our village road now swarms with delivery vans from Waitrose, Sainsburys etc and delivery slots are now easy to get at short notice cf early 2020 when they were as rare as hens' teeth. Thus we and several neighbours save a 18 round mile trip to the nearest supermarket.

 

[Sanntos]

Finman please, change the quote, I didn't write that

 

[Swarm]

Far better strategy is never to accompany management. The weekly shop used to be one of several opportunities for SWMBO to have her own space, just as beekeeping is mine.
Actually, Covid has changed all this; our village road now swarms with delivery vans from Waitrose, Sainsburys etc and delivery slots are now easy to get at short notice cf early 2020 when they were as rare as hens' teeth. Thus we and several neighbours save a 18 round mile trip to the nearest supermarket.

I worked with a chap who couldn't believe we were still supermarket shopping, pointing out the obvious benefits of time and money saved.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Actually, Covid has changed all this; our village road now swarms with delivery vans from Waitrose, Sainsburys etc and delivery slots are now easy to get at short notice cf early 2020 when they were as rare as hens' teeth. Thus we and several neighbours save a 18 round mile trip to the nearest supermarket.

Well the Covid silver lining is that I never have to set foot in a supermarket ever again

 

[Ian123]

I worked with a chap who couldn't believe we were still supermarket shopping, pointing out the obvious benefits of time and money saved.

I really don’t think I would trust anyone to pick my food, maybe the real general basics but that’s about it.

 

[JamezF]

I really don’t think I would trust anyone to pick my food, maybe the real general basics but that’s about it.

That's pretty much how we use it. Anything that is in tins, jars, bottles, cleaning products etc. are delivered because it's an easy twenty-mile round trip to get there and it saves a lot of tedium into the bargain. Just about everything else either comes from the garden or the butcher/market in the nearby village (they call it a town, but I know a village when I see one) which also allows everyone to catch up on the local gossip

James

 

[pargyle]

I really don’t think I would trust anyone to pick my food, maybe the real general basics but that’s about it.

It's fine .... if you don't feel something is up to the standard then you either send it back with the driver and it gets credited or if it's something you come across later you tell them and they credit it - usually without quibble or any need to send it back, There are sometimes substitutions when a product you have ordered is not available but they always tell you about them and if you don't like them you just say and they take it back. Sometimes they substitute an alternative that is far better or bigger than you ordered and they charge you the price of the item you ordered. We ordered a fresh chicken a few weeks ago from Waitrose and the same price substitution (bizarrely) was a fresh turkey about twice the size and twice the price of the chicken we ordered ! Cheap turkey dinner that week.

Nothing to hate about ordering on line and getting it delivered in most cases ...

 

[Boston Bees]

Errr.... anyway, back to nucs?

 

[pargyle]

Errr.... anyway, back to nucs?

I think we've run out of the Nuc thread and diverged too far to do a u-turn .... Not much more you can say about Nucs is there ? The cost has risen ... will probably continue to rise ... the options ?

1. Pay the going rate
2. Buy full size boxes and dummy them down
3. Make your own out of timber/Kingspan or a combination of these materials or anything else that works for you and costs less.

End of really !

 

[Boston Bees]

I think we've run out of the Nuc thread and diverged too far to do a u-turn .... Not much more you can say about Nucs is there ? The cost has risen ... will probably continue to rise ... the options ?

1. Pay the going rate
2. Buy full size boxes and dummy them down
3. Make your own out of timber/Kingspan or a combination of these materials or anything else that works for you and costs less.

End of really !

Fair enough

 

[JamezF]

I'm very tempted to move to using poly for nucs and brood boxes with timber for supers if I can find a suitable roof that works for both.

I appreciate that some people believe that bees can cope fine with low temperatures, particularly when they're only the likes of those we get here in the south west of England, and I don't think I'd even disagree. However I still feel that my colonies get through winter more easily in poly hives in that they need less in the way of stores and I rarely need to feed them.

I believe there are some people who make their own boxes just out of Kingspan/Celotex or similar, but I'm not really sure I'd want to do that here because it's too easily damaged (and I'm really not sure how it stands up to the weather in the longer term). I have been thinking on the possibility of using both Kingspan/Celotex and wood though. I'm tempted to play about with something like that when I have time, though it's entirely possible it will be too much of a pain to be worth the effort.

James

 

[bobba]

I suspect the production costs of Polly nuc vs full hive are not that different. Once the tooling has been done and molds are made, I suspect both have a simlar number of parts and need a simlar amount of human labor to produce. The material costs between the 2 are probably not that great compared to other factors. So I think the biggest factor in cost between the 2 is physical size for storage and transport.

As others have said, a lot of things are going up in price right now.

In fact I heard that honey is going up in price this season too.....

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

think we've run out of the Nuc thread and diverged too far to do a u-turn .... Not much more you can say about Nucs is there ? The cost has risen ... will probably continue to rise ... the options ?

1. Pay the going rate
2. Buy full size boxes and dummy them down
3. Make your own out of timber/Kingspan or a combination of these materials or anything else that works for you and costs less.

End of really !

or, just carry on wingeing about it for another ten pages, what else is there to do on a cold Winter's evening?

 

[Boston Bees]

I'm very tempted to move to using poly for nucs and brood boxes with timber for supers if I can find a suitable roof that works for both.

Abelo old-style 11-frame poly boxes take standard national roofs, or to put it another way, their deep roof goes over wooden national supers just fine

as can be seen from the photos

National Poly Deep Roof - Welcome to Abelo's Beekeeping Supplies

 

[pargyle]

Fair enough

Mind you .... one often wonders where a thread is going to meander to next... !

I omitted to say that I do think the cost of poly nucs has gone up disproprtionately in recent years but it's probably that the cost of manufacture is not so much in the materials but the actual production of the Nuc takes as much time as the larger size boxes and have been underpriced since the time when they were first produced and are just catching up. When you consider the number of people who have timber full size hives but poly nucs it may also be a market driven opportunity to increase the price as a result of demand ?

The OP also was looking for other alternatives for selling nucs ... I think most commercial nuc sellers, these days, sell in Correx nucs which are considerably cheaper than poly nucs.

Now back to the price of cake ... which has also been going up disproprtionately ... my favourite Lidl Bakewell Tarts have gone from 85p to 99p in the last week ...

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Mind you .... one often wonders where a thread is going to meander to next... !

I omitted to say that I do think the cost of poly nucs has gone up disproprtionately in recent years but it's probably that the cost of manufacture is not so much in the materials but the actual production of the Nuc takes as much time as the larger size boxes and have been underpriced since the time when they were first produced and are just catching up. When you consider the number of people who have timber full size hives but poly nucs it may also be a market driven opportunity to increase the price as a result of demand ?

The OP also was looking for other alternatives for selling nucs ... I think most commercial nuc sellers, these days, sell in Correx nucs which are considerably cheaper than poly nucs.

Now back to the price of cake ... which has also been going up disproprtionately ... my favourite Lidl Bakewell Tarts have gone from 85p to 99p in the last week ...

Many local small suppliers near me lend the nuc until the purchaser has transferred the frames and bees into their own hive. Return of the NUC with new frames and foundation completes the deal. Deals involving greater distances obviously require a different approach.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Mind you .... one often wonders where a thread is going to meander to next... !

Now back to the price of cake ... which has also been going up disproprtionately ... my favourite Lidl Bakewell Tarts have gone from 85p to 99p in the last week ...

Have you noticed Malt Bread is now available ready sliced?

 

[pargyle]

Have you noticed Malt Bread is now available ready sliced?

Oh ... it needs to be ... Their malt bread is so good but it drives me mad that there is no way to cut it without compressing it down to the size of a thumbnail ... forces me to buy the more expensive, less tasty, pre-sliced branded malt loaf.....

 

[Erichalfbee]

Have you noticed Malt Bread is now available ready sliced?

Buttered too?