Hear in France a 6 frame nuc on dadant is €140-160 in poly,and cheaper if you buy in quantity.The uk seems expensive for bee's.
Spain even cheaper. You can pick up good nucs there from April for about 55 to 60 pounds.....with a young queen and ready to explode on the OSR. Go to parts of Eastern Europe and then they cost even less.
That's why there is an illicit trade in the back of fridge vans goes on. Pick up in Spain or Italy or misc. E. European sources for very little, and they hit the market here at UK prices, often purporting to be local.
France suffers the same as us, nucs come over from Spain and then are sold as black bees in the south. Spanish price immediately becomes French price and the bees are rebadged, and even then some then come to the UK, leaves Spain at 50 pounds or so, becomes French and leaves there at 80 pounds or so, arrives in the UK and is sold for 150 pounds.
Last spring a Spanish nuc producer was trying to offload a stack of BS National nucs to me that he had bred for a well know UK vendor and had failed to secure payment for the load before. He did in the hundreds a year for this guy. Nice black bees too...very black....but....also none too great temper and swarming wise.
The UK market is very insular and a bit artificial in many ways. Our bees are very expensive, as are all our home produced appliances. Our honey is also at the high end of the market if you look like for like (UK OSR v EU OSR for example...exactly the same, but from 1,5 to 3 times the prices for UK). Ireland even more so.
The high prices for bees on the UK market is driven by the amateur sector who decide they want bees and they want them NOW and do not really mind (in general) how much they cost.
