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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Wilson" <infomet AT embarqmail.com>
  • To: "Randall Austin" <ra41717 AT gmail.com>, "Meredith Friedrick" <friema16 AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Orange County Bees <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Getting first packages of bees
  • Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:17:44 -0400

Right!  BUT
In a good nuc you see the queen working and you see the brood pattern and brood in various stages of development.
You don’t have to pay for an expensive queen and then hope she works out.  If she doesn’t, you’ve wasted considerable time, during which your workers have gotten that much older.
I can’t verify or quantify, but I feel more and more strongly that close confinement, poor diet, vibration, diesel fumes, and climatic swings can’t be good for fragile little bugs!
California and back, no way!
I think these are important factors for a beginner to consider.
WL
 
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [ocba] Getting first packages of bees
 
Meredith,

Making bee packages for sale is a big business that requires a whole lot of colonies, a whole lot of queens, a whole lot of expertise and a whole lot of warm weather early in the year. I am not personally aware of anyone in NC who shakes their own colonies in order to sell packages. When you see package bees for sale in NC they typically have either been brought up here by the truckload from Georgia or, sometimes, they are second-hand bees no longer needed by someone who has taken them to California in February to pollinate almonds.

Instead, local bees for sale are in "nucs" (short for "nucleus colonies", or mini-colonies). The worker bees in nucs are always local, although the queen that comes with them may or may not be. Nucs come with several frames of drawn comb and brood, both of which provide a jump-start to a new colony. This is a real advantage of nucs, not the fact that the worker bees didn't go through the mail. But nucs aren't usually available until later in the season compared to packages. So as with most things in life, there is a trade-off.

Do note that the issues around local-raised queens versus through-the-mail queens don't really apply to packages of worker bees, or at least they aren't important compared to a host of other things that people should worry about first. The differences between starting with nucs versus starting with packages don't have anything at all to do with the provenance of the worker bees. Every single one of the worker bees you start with is going to be dead five or six weeks later regardless of where they came from. The queen, on the other hand, is the "engine" of the hive and can potentially last several years, so her health and condition are quite important.

So, it is worthwhile to give some thought about the source of your queens, but don't agonize over the source of the worker bees you start with. Choose nuc versus package based on your preferences and goals. Either can be purchased with or without a queen (or you can replace the queen at any time), so you can mix-and-match however you desire.

Randall Austin
 
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 8:56 PM, Meredith Friedrick <friema16 AT gmail.com> wrote:
Here's a real novice question:
 
I don't have bees yet (don't have the hives yet either) and want to order some now for arrival in spring.  Through reading the posts on the listserv, I read that getting local queens is preferable to getting them shipped from long distances (due to travel and disruption, etc., I guess).  Is there such a thing as getting locally-raised packages of bees (with the queens) in order to keep from being shipped from a great distance?  If so, where can I get them and when should I order them?
 
Thanks in advance,
Meredith Friedrick

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