From what I have seen and heard nucleus and package prices have taken a big hike in price this year. A operation near me charged $85 for five frame nucs last spring and will be charging $115.00 This year, and $76 for 3lb packages. I see others charging around $120 for nucs too.
what are prices in your area?
I'm charging $120 to $95 depending on quantity.
90 something to 100 for nucs and 60 something for packages.
Quote from: AllenF on January 08, 2011, 09:14:00 PM
90 something to 100 for nucs and 60 something for packages.
what about queens ALLEN -i have heard prices from HAWAI are at 20 bucks
even large orders-where you could get them for 16 before the mites and bettals-RDY-B
Hardeman Apaiaries has queens for 14.75 each for the spring. Prices always drop mid summer.
yea for a quality queen thats a great price--RDY-B
ill be selling nucs for 100 this spring.
grafted queens from survivor stock.
bailey
What would be a reasonable price to pay for hives/nucs established from swarms captured the same year, assuming they were healthy?
If you re-queen it I would say it all depends on how big it is. As is, I would not want any swarm from AHB territory, but Im from Wisconsin.
I have seen prices as high as $150 for a five frame nuc. WOW!
Me too bee-nuts, that's why I'm building NUC boxes and learning all I can about keeping/wintering them. We've got to raise queens locally and if no one is doing it in our area we have to do it ourselves. Nucs are becoming very popular/expensive and I've already read some reports of packages, some brood and honey frames being dumped into NUC boxes in the south and being sold as Northern Nucs to unsuspecting northern beeks. The Northern States Queen Breeder Association (NSQBA) has a member in Wisconsin and some on the forum. May be a good place to start seeking local queens. I'm afraid the prices are only going to go up for NUCs.
And that's not even talking about the ban on Aussie bees and how that's gonna affect what's available this year. Glad I already ordered mine and have a few strong colonies wintering (for) now.
thomas
I believe the Aussie ban only hits the Almond/ Cali/ Early West Coast market a little hard. They buy the queens by the hundreds and would set them up now in hives for the almonds. By the time our spring summer market is ready for our (US) queens, they can't ship. So your early queens will cost more. July queens will be the same as normal (with the yearly mark up).
We're still at $80 for our nucs, but will be going up a tad next year.
Scott
$80 for a 2 frame nuc, not bad :-D. But it is all about location. Shipping them west or way north can double the cost.
Still another good reason to raise them locally, a fair price (w/out S&H) AND regionally adapted bees 8-)
thomas
Along the same lines, sorry to hijack the thread bee-nutz, how do you guys define a 5 frame nuc? Do you consider it 2 frames of brood, 2 frames of food (pollen and nectar) and one frame of comb? Or three frames of brood and two frames of food? Or any other variation?
I apparently had a differing opinion on what a nuc was last year. Every other year it was 3-4 frames of brood and 1-2 frames of food. No wax, all filled and almost ready to be put in a 10 frame box. This last year I got a nuc that was one frame of brood, one full frame of food, one half frame of food, and two frames that were halfway drawn out. When I contacted the seller he said it was industry standard to sell one frame brood, two frames food, one frame drawn (but empty) and one frame of foundation. He thought it was better to give me two frames partially drawn then one frame fully drawn and one frame of foundation. I didn't want to argue with the guy, just moved on (but paid $110 for it).
Most nuc prices I've seen are around $120. Some as low as $85 or $90, but they don't last long.
If prices go up and quality goes down at the same time, it is truely a seller's market. I'll be making my own nucs to overwinter this spring (spent the last few months reading up on it).
We only sell what we consider "strong" nucs...3 frames brood, 1 frame honey and pollen, 1 frame foundation (or a foundationless frame depending on the customer) for expansion.
Scott
Last year I was getting $80-$85 for nice strong nuc's. Typically 3-4 frames of brood and the rest drawn comb/honey/pollen. From what I'm hearing I'll probably boost my price to about $100 this year. Of course I'd sell them for $120 if I could get it!!
Mike
To me a five frame nuc should hold five frames full of bees, two or more frames of brood with stores of pollen and honey. If you are getting four frames of bees and they are pulling a feeder and installing a frame of foundation right before sale they should tell you so. I have bought nucs with five frames of brood, and the typical pollen and honey arc on top of frames.
I think if you are getting two frames of brood you are not getting a nuc that has had a laying queen in it for three or four weeks but one just made up and sold as soon as made. If you give a queen three weeks to lay, she will fill the nuc with brood. At least thats my experiance.
I also plan on trying to winter nucs this coming winter. I actually am this winter but single deeps with six to eight frames of bees. All six are alive at this point. I will try to keep up enough equipment to take advantage of all swarm cells this coming season so I can have the queens needed to make small nucs in late july to built up to five frames of bees and winter them side by side, wrapped and insulated.
Quote from: bee-nuts on January 13, 2011, 02:55:00 AM
To me a five frame nuc should hold five frames full of bees, two or more frames of brood with stores of pollen and honey. If you are getting four frames of bees and they are pulling a feeder and installing a frame of foundation right before sale they should tell you so. I have bought nucs with five frames of brood, and the typical pollen and honey arc on top of frames.
I think if you are getting two frames of brood you are not getting a nuc that has had a laying queen in it for three or four weeks but one just made up and sold as soon as made. If you give a queen three weeks to lay, she will fill the nuc with brood. At least thats my experiance.
I also plan on trying to winter nucs this coming winter. I actually am this winter but single deeps with six to eight frames of bees. All six are alive at this point. I will try to keep up enough equipment to take advantage of all swarm cells this coming season so I can have the queens needed to make small nucs in late july to built up to five frames of bees and winter them side by side, wrapped and insulated.
We're in agreement again bee-nuts, instead of relying on southern raised queens and bees with who knows what kind of history, I'm spending my energy, after five years of buying southern packages/queens, learning the techniques required to "keep" bees and raise queens in our neck of the woods. I bought a NUC (?) two years agao, brought it home and the bees obsconded within a week. I don't believe it was ever a NUC colony, I just didn't knwo any better. Won't let that happen again.
thomas
I am very inexperienced (one year of beekeeping) but I started two nucs last summer from the hives that I put packages in in the spring. In hind sight it wasn't the best choice to start them from brand new hives but, it was very educational. I learned how to produce a few queens and if the nucs survive I will have increased my colonies from two to four.
Tim
Good work Tim. Most first year beekeepers are afraid to do increase.
Did you do a walkaway split?
Tim,
That's the best way to learn. Raising queen and having about 1/2 as many nucs as you have hives is what I've gotten into. Requeening the hive in the Fall breaks the mite reproduction cycle naturally and ensures come Spring you've got a fresh queen in there that's less prone to swarm. Keep the nucs so you have overwintered fresh Fall queens to replace any losses you may have, start any increases you want, sell them, or split them to make more nucs.
[/quote]
I also plan on trying to winter nucs this coming winter. I actually am this winter but single deeps with six to eight frames of bees. All six are alive at this point. I will try to keep up enough equipment to take advantage of all swarm cells this coming season so I can have the queens needed to make small nucs in late july to built up to five frames of bees and winter them side by side, wrapped and insulated.
[/quote]We're in agreement again bee-nuts, instead of relying on southern raised queens and bees with who knows what kind of history, I'm spending my energy, after five years of buying southern packages/queens, learning the techniques required to "keep" bees and raise queens in our neck of the woods. I bought a NUC (?) two years agao, brought it home and the bees obsconded within a week. I don't believe it was ever a NUC colony, I just didn't knwo any better. Won't let that happen again.
thomas
[/quote]
I have only had one nuc obscond and it is one I made with no brood, just honey, pollen, bees and queen. When I went to check in on them they were gone. I soon realized how stupid a mistake I made. I have never had a colony obscond with brood in it. I stopped several colonies from swarming last season by taking old queen away with two frames of bees and brood. I then split the swarm cells and remaining bees in two or three colonies. Not once did the old queen swarm or obscond. But I have read that sometimes they will. I cant imagine a virgin queen in a nuc that has had time to lay for two or three weeks abscond. My guess T Beek and only a guess is that nuc was recently made, did not have time to settle in before being moved around, opened up and transfered and maybe even had an old queen that was taken from a colony about to swarm. Who knows. But today with prices as high as they are and people desperate and having no control where their bees come from and conditions they are in if they want to get bees, who knows what you are getting.
With AHB spreading, and the more we learn about how disease spreads so easily, (even in pollen on flowers that another bee was on) keeping things local is a good idea. The more I read and learn, the more I want to stay away from other peoples bees. Yes you cant live in a bubble, but you can reduce exposure by keeping it local, trap your own pollen, raise your own queens, trade queens with other locals, and so forth.
Special, I unintentionally did a walk away. I started the nuc with three frames of brood and bees a frame of honey and one foundation. I came back two days later and took the queen from the donor hive that I wanted to produce queens for me and moved her to the nuc. They had apparently had young enough larva and started their own queens already so they killed my queen. Anyway I ended up with three new queens in June. I found out in December that a guy I work with has a bee tree in his yard about a mile away. He said it's been there for about five years so I think I'm probably breeding some Northern survivor stock into my new queens through the Drones produced in his tree. I've got my fingers crossed.
Tim
Course Bee -
You learned a valuable lesson with the unintentional walkaway split you did. When introducing a queen to a hive that has been queenless for more than an hour, always check for queen cells. Whatever though, many experienced beeks make this mistake from time to time, as long as you learn from it. I hope you didn't loose too good of a queen.
In reference to the 5 year old Survivor bee tree, be careful about these. Many people don't understand the difference of when one colony dies out and another one moves in. Most swarms like to find places where old colonies had lived. It's inviting to them. So while it seems like the same colony has lived there for five years, in actuality it's more likely that a hive moved in five years ago and didn't overwinter properly. Then next spring another hive moved in where the old one had died and lived there fore a season or two, then swarmed and absconed as a result. Ect, ect. One of my beekeeping professors actually did a study on them, and found that most of the "survivor stock" bee trees on the perimeter of bee yards arn't what they seem to be. If they are dying out every season (or every other season) as a result of being 'not survivor stock' and new swarms are moving in, you are actually breeding with losing stock.
Just a thought though. It could be the same colony for five years. Who knows.
Thanks for the reply Specialkayme. It was the better of my two queens at the time but, I learned a valuable lesson. The bee tree though. I know there is another keeper that has a yard about three miles away. Do you think the swarms would be moving in from there. Also my coworker said he has seen swarms in the trees near there a couple of times. Could they be moving in or absconding?
Tim
Realistically speaking its doubtful any Ferrel's living too much beyond the equator are there only because beeks had something to do about it.
Ferrel's in our neck of the woods would likely perish in just a few years without our assistance introducing new genetics from uncaught swarms (from our own hives) each year. We wouldn't have "honeybees" up here without Beeks keeping them.
They just wouldn't survive.
thomas
>Do you think the swarms would be moving in from there. Also my coworker said he has seen swarms in the trees near there a couple of times. Could they be moving in or absconding?<
Very likely, but who knows for sure.
Having a few "feral" hives in the area to mate with probably won't hurt, but it's probably no different than having a few neighbors who have beehives in the area.
Quote from: bailey on January 09, 2011, 07:27:52 PM
ill be selling nucs for 100 this spring.
grafted queens from survivor stock.
bailey
Will ya deliver to Bud's?