- Joined
- Sep 7, 2013
- Messages
- 309
- Reaction score
- 258
- Location
- Loughborough
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 11
6 years ago, I started out in beekeeping, buying (locally) a really healthy colony in a 14x12 Paynes poly-nuc - for £150. At the time, I thought I was paying marginally over the odds, but was very happy (for a number of reasons) to commit.
So, today, I am being invited by a farmer where I have an out-apiary to rapidly expand the number of hives I have on his site (currently 6), and he wants to support this financially. Potentially, this means immediately doubling the number of production hives for 2020. Clearly, if the urgency was not there (on his part), I could write 2020 off as a year of increase, and do some early splits from my existing stock. However ...
... I want instead to consider just buying some new stocks, to hit the ground running.
As such, I would want colonies that are of a profile (population, queen fecundity) that are ready to explode in Spring 2020, reach full-size fairly quickly, and therefore give a decent 2020 crop ... all other things being equal.
Oh, and I keep my bees on the 14x12 format.
The obvious option is to put my name down for some overwintered 14x12 nucs - which I would presumably be able to take around late April.
However, the going rate for these seems to be somewhere between £240 and £290. Lol. Realllly ??!!!
Package bees might be an option (at the £150-£160 mark), but I am uneasy about the risk of Queen introduction and - more fundamentally - the speed at which the colony will fully establish.
To be honest, these prices are just barking mad - in my opinion.
The other option I might consider are auctions (e.g. Lincoln/Newark), where I have seen full hives of bees change hands for less than £150. Apart from there being no guarantee of what comes to auction though (or what price it fetches), there is, more importantly, no guarantee of provenance, absence of disease etc... doing this.
... Likewise, with the option of waiting to see if anything becomes available via my local association.
Finally, my eye has fallen on (waiting for the tomatoes to start raining down) ... importation. For various reasons, I keep my eye on the German beekeeping market, and am always astonished that EVERYTHING (bees, hives, jars, syrup - you name it) can be bought there for about half the UK price - even allowing for the crap exchange rate.
So, seeing prices for packages (with Queen) of around €80 (nucs at about €140 - though I would possibly then choose to shook swarm onto my own frames due to the frame dimensions - thereby losing an inherent advantage of a nuc (brood)), it rather begs the question as to whether I should be looking at this.
I presume there are hobbyists and farmers alike on this forum with some experience of importing (package?) bees from Europe ?? Is this worth a look ? If so, are there any suppliers which come recommended ?
A lot to take in, but any thoughts / advice appreciated on how to keep costs down.
Sent from my Google Pixelbook using Tapatalk
So, today, I am being invited by a farmer where I have an out-apiary to rapidly expand the number of hives I have on his site (currently 6), and he wants to support this financially. Potentially, this means immediately doubling the number of production hives for 2020. Clearly, if the urgency was not there (on his part), I could write 2020 off as a year of increase, and do some early splits from my existing stock. However ...
... I want instead to consider just buying some new stocks, to hit the ground running.
As such, I would want colonies that are of a profile (population, queen fecundity) that are ready to explode in Spring 2020, reach full-size fairly quickly, and therefore give a decent 2020 crop ... all other things being equal.
Oh, and I keep my bees on the 14x12 format.
The obvious option is to put my name down for some overwintered 14x12 nucs - which I would presumably be able to take around late April.
However, the going rate for these seems to be somewhere between £240 and £290. Lol. Realllly ??!!!
Package bees might be an option (at the £150-£160 mark), but I am uneasy about the risk of Queen introduction and - more fundamentally - the speed at which the colony will fully establish.
To be honest, these prices are just barking mad - in my opinion.
The other option I might consider are auctions (e.g. Lincoln/Newark), where I have seen full hives of bees change hands for less than £150. Apart from there being no guarantee of what comes to auction though (or what price it fetches), there is, more importantly, no guarantee of provenance, absence of disease etc... doing this.
... Likewise, with the option of waiting to see if anything becomes available via my local association.
Finally, my eye has fallen on (waiting for the tomatoes to start raining down) ... importation. For various reasons, I keep my eye on the German beekeeping market, and am always astonished that EVERYTHING (bees, hives, jars, syrup - you name it) can be bought there for about half the UK price - even allowing for the crap exchange rate.
So, seeing prices for packages (with Queen) of around €80 (nucs at about €140 - though I would possibly then choose to shook swarm onto my own frames due to the frame dimensions - thereby losing an inherent advantage of a nuc (brood)), it rather begs the question as to whether I should be looking at this.
I presume there are hobbyists and farmers alike on this forum with some experience of importing (package?) bees from Europe ?? Is this worth a look ? If so, are there any suppliers which come recommended ?
A lot to take in, but any thoughts / advice appreciated on how to keep costs down.
Sent from my Google Pixelbook using Tapatalk
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