If that’s the case for you, here is a list of some great suppliers:ġ) Dadant ( 2) Miller Bee Supply ( 3) Mann Lake ( Are There Any Cost Saving Options for a Frugal Beginning Beekeeper? You can find many of them at places like Dadant, Miller Bee Supply, and Mann Lake.įor some of us, the online shopping experience is the way to go. Beyond that, there are myriad ancillary tools and gadgets to help enhance your beekeeping experience. At the very least, you’ll want to have protective equipment (such as a veil, suit, and gloves), a hive tool, a bee brush, and possibly a smoker. There’s a great article here listing 11 Essential Beekeeping Supplies you can check out. Unless you’re planning on being a Bee-Haver instead of Bee-Keeper you’ll need some accessory equipment to help you care for your bees. You can find some great beginning kits sold by Dadant, including the entire hive at. Lastly, every beginning beekeeper should have some sort of feeding device for their new colony in case they need to receive supplemental sugar-water. I typically recommend beginning beekeepers buy one medium super their first year in Colorado.
You’ll also want to have some honey supers around in case you get a good nectar flow and these will need frames and foundation as well. The most common hive setup, known as the Langstroth hive, consists of a bottom board, two deep boxes including frames and foundation, an inner cover, an outer cover, an entrance reducer, and some sort of stand.
We tend to think of a beehive as a bunch of stacked boxes but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Swarm: Of course, you could always catch a wild swarm of bees! Of course, you have to FIND them first. Sometimes beekeepers will sell an entire hive setup including an existing colony. The old queen is included, the bees are allowed to make a new queen, or a new mated queen is introduced.
#BEE HIVES COST FULL#
Split or Full Hive: A split is made when several frames from an existing, thriving colony are taken and put into a new hive box. These tend to be available in or around April unless they are obtained from a local, established beekeeper in which case they may not be available until May or June. They typically come in a box with five frames of bees, brood, pollen, nectar/honey, and a fertile, laying queen bee. Nucleus Hive: A nucleus hive (or Nuc) is essentially a mini-colony of bees. This is the most common method of obtaining bees as a beginning beekeeper. Packages tend to become available in or around April and are sold in a variety of ways local pick-up direct from the provider, local pick-up from the bee club who obtains several packages for their members to buy or purchased online and shipped to the beekeeper. These packages consist of (typically) 3 pounds of bees in a box with a young, mated queen hanging in a smaller box inside. I’ll list them and the range of typical costs below:īee Package: Every year, late winter to early spring, large-scale beekeeping operations (primarily in California and Georgia) create packaged bees to sell to beekeepers around the country.
There are FOUR common ways to get some bees.
Of course, we can’t keep bees if we don’t actually HAVE bees! Acquiring bees isn’t quite as simple as a trip to the pet store, but it isn’t too complicated either. What Do We Need? What Does It Cost? 1) Bees
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