Packages or established hives

[Greg Peck]

I had ordered 4 3# packages and had planned on setting up 4 new hives. However I also have an opportunity to buy multiple established hives (2 deep HB each). My question is I need to stay in the 250.00 range for new bees so I am wondering which is better. Buying 4 packages and starting 4 hives (cost 240.00) or buying 2 full hives and possibly splitting them (cost 200.00). My goal is getting as many hives running as possible but also harvesting some honey this year. I don't have to have a bunch of honey I just want enough to last me through the year and to give some away. Of course if I can get a bunch of hive and a bunch of honey that would be great too.

What do you think?

[catvjbs]

Greg

     If it were me I would inspect the 2 established hives and if they are healthy I would go that rout and make 2 nuke's from them. This will give you 2 strong hives that you may get a little honey from this year and 2 new hives to build and let get strong.  :-D

[TwT]

if only you could get both sets, odds are the only way you get honey this year would be from the hives but you lose all that learning and watching starting them packages, you could make a couple nucs from those two hives. imagine getting the packages and the hives, then splitting the hives, you could have 8 hives going into winter very easy or more depending on were you wanted to stop for the year  ;)

[Kathyp]

if you get he hives, you have money in your budget for queens and you can get you splits going faster.  :-)

[KONASDAD]

I bought two complete hives (1 deep each) from a commercial beek. I was able to get about three gall in my first year predominately from my one strong hive. The only issue I had was as a newbie, my first inspection was w/ a loaded deep of bees which was intimidating and hard to manage intitially. W/ practice I got more comfortable. They wintered well as both survived and they are both very strong now even though our weather has been atrocious and cold and wet which has delayed them some. The complete hives will give you more frames to do divides w/ as well so you can requeen and make 5 or six nucs which would be the same size as packages and your apiary increade would be greater than proposed increase yopu mentioned.Lastly, your queens will be weather acclimated to your locale which I think is a plus as compared to packages from the south.

[beemaster]

Greg:

Boy you got yourself in a quandry :) As stated many times, both is a wonderful and nearly magical way to enter beekeeping, but $$$ wise you need to figure which is the better deal.

Starting with healthy and strong hives are great, of course the issue there is how healthy and strong are the hives? A good inspection, making the owner go thru his inspection method may tell you alot about the hives - seeing good brood patterns, plump and vibrant queens, fair amount of last seasons honey as a starter to build on, comb that is not old and brittle, a good quantity of bees to start with, not too many drones, lots of flights and activity from the hives and stuff like good joints in the boxes, look for waxmoth damage to wood, over all good looking hives for the money. Smell for any fermentation or sour smells, all hives should have a nice creamy wax/honey mix smell, pleasant never bitter.

A last thought about showing you the hives, I don't know of a single beekeeper who WOULDN'T go out of their way to show off a hive to a new beekeeper, it's in our nature.

They are all things that really give you a bang for the buck. I assume the established hives are 2 supers high? If the owner WON'T show you the hives, unless he is physically unable, I'd think twice - I'd even ask to do an inspection myself (even if it were my first) and judge his response.

I bought an established hive and although it was healthy and appeared in wood-worthy shape, this was the brood box that went out of square on me, dropping every frame to the ground and getting stung to the point of anaphalaxis - and mind you, I was doing apitherapy every day with about 40 stings to my neck - lucky I had a good tolerence built up.

You won't be seeing much honey surplus with your packages the first season. Up around us you really need to concidar how much you are willing to save for the bees and by time they draw comb through heavy feeding, establish brood cycles, build up that first box and you add the second, our season is about over. You just can't jump to two boxes high, that first box from scratch takes a lot of feeding to promote wax and inside that hive a very methodical and fascinating balance of building comb for storage of nectar, pollen and brood space is all going on - surely the bees know what they are doing, but it all takes time.

Setting up colonies for our region is probably the most important part of hive survival. Knowing what your bees will need and what you can gather really can make such a difference - look how cool this Spring has been, 4 or 5 extra weeks of cold weather can kill a hive JUST as the weather breaks and it could have been avoided by an extra frame of honey or two.

I think starting with established hives is great. You can easily split them by buying extra queens for a speedier growth in hive population, or go the old fashion (yet tried and true method) of shuffling brood and workers into new boxes. The latter will set you back a good month, almost two when waiting for the first foragers to come from the brood of a developed queen - but the learning experience is invaluable.

I hope this helped a bit, as everything is blooming around us now, making that decision is something you might want to step on the gas with - nothing like lots of pollen to feed that brood. Best of luck and happiest of beekeeping.

[Greg Peck]

Thanks for your help. I don’t know if it is going to matter because I cant get a hold of the beekeep who was selling the hives. If I do get a hold of him I think I will get one hive and maybe split it and also get 2 packages to see how that works.

[newguy]

greg
last year i bought my first 5 frame nuc hive and like the guy said that i bought it from i "will never want another package again". you get a huge headstart over package bees with a nuc.

[JP]

I like your decision on that Greg. Sometimes, things pan out in your favor, but you could acquire problems. It's a toss up. Hard to beat an established, healthy hive though, for production purposes.