Okay I confess. I have no idea what I am doing! The more I read, the more questions I have. We do not have our bees or hive yet. I expect the hive and beginners kit to arrive soon. We ordered the 6 5/8 Assembled Starter Kit from Dadant. He recommended we start with a nuc , so I ordered one that we will pick up next month. I was wondering though.. should I have ordered two? It seems we ordered a pretty big hive. We've been kicking around the idea of beekeeping for years. At the beginning of the month we decided to go for it, only to discover that didnt give us much time to get our ducks in a row. Any and all insight , opinions or chiding is welcome!
One nuc per hive. It won't take long to fill it. There is lots of info to be gleaned here. Many people will be chiming in with lots of info. I have to get ready for work, so I'll leave the rest to them.
2? Wouldn't 4 be twice as good? But 6 would be nice. Or 8? Wait, now you see the problem with most beekeepers. And there checkbooks are light too.
Its normally better to start with 2 hives. This way you have a guide to know if some thing is off in one of the hives as they should usually be doing close to the same thing. it also allows you to swap out brood or honey frames in an emergency.
that's just my 2 cents worth though.
There is no one way that is best. Start with one or start with as many as you like. Ultimately do what feels comfortable, and the rest will come. If you want more (and many do), that is easily remedied. I hope you find bees as fascinating as we do. Welcome.
Back in the day, I started with just one package of bees. The next year I split into 3 hives. Then a couple of swarms and more splits, and I ended up with white boxes all over the yard.
Thanks so much for all the insight! I will be ordering another hive come payday. I intend on keeping an empty hive around for emergency expansion, though I fear that will have me buying a hive every payday ! I admit , I was just blindly ordering things I thought we might need. So, we have some things we need, some things we dont need yet. I didn't realize we would be better off with two hives to start. However, the section of our land we have set aside for the bees is going to allow for LOTs of hives. I don't even have the bees yet and I am already absolutely fascinated by them. What amazing creatures these little things are!