New to beekeeping

Mad Benny

I'm doing a beginner course in beekeeping. I've ordered a hive and heard conflicting advice about the next purchase. One said only buy an overwinter nuc while the other said don't.

The prices vary widely. Anything from 125 to 250 Euro.

Any advice?

Apiarist

I suppose you are getting a kit, like this https://www.donegalbees.ie/product/commercial-hive-starter-kit/

If you have ordered only a hive, then you will need at least the beekeeping suit, a smoker and a hive tool.

As for the bees themselves, prices range from zero to €100s, to cannot buy because they won't sell them to you.

Back to your question:
- Why buy the overwintered colony? Because it will be available asap, i.e. in March/April, the queen has matured and will be ready to ramp up egg laying as soon as food is available. So it is possible to get the surplus honey from this colony this year. Supply of overwintered colonies is limited, so the price would reflect that.
- A colony created this year with a newly mated queen would have to build up, so this colony probably will not bring any honey this year.

Now both of these explanations are not comprehensive. You can get a worthless overwintered colony, for example if the queen mated poorly last year. A new colony can be boosted by addition of worker bees from other colonies and then the colony should develop faster and may actually produce a surplus.

Loveinapril

Ask the course providers what they think. I got a nuc from the association I did my course with, that is their standard practice. It stops people from importing bees that may have disease.

Good advice. Stay in touch with your association.
If you get an overwintered nuc you will have to deal with swarming and honey processing in your first year, and that can be rather a lot while you are still learning.
If you get a nuc in June or July you can concentrate on getting them ready for winter and next year deal with the swarming impulse, making increase and honey processing.

Oh and make and put out a swarm trap. You might get lucky in May or June.

Doctors room ghost

Do people ever build their own hives or is it more practical to buy them ready made or flat pack.just wondering.always fancied having a hive but wife won’t have one around the place

bpmurray

Doctors room ghost wrote: »

Do people ever build their own hives or is it more practical to buy them ready made or flat pack.just wondering.always fancied having a hive but wife won’t have one around the place

Absolutely! If you know what you're doing, it's remarkably simple. Personally, I wouldn't have a clue, but you may be better. It is also much cheaper (obviously).

Note that the boxes are pretty straightforward, but the floor and roof are a bit more complicated, and the frames are so cheap, it's just not worth the effort.

Effects

It's time consuming. It works out cheaper for me to not spend time making hives, just putting them together or sometimes buying them already put together.

GreeBo

The newer "Flow" hives look to make it pretty easy, though Im not sure how well they will look last after a couple of years (they seem to be ok based on a quick google)
Though it does seem to sterilize the whole process a little bit...but maybe you get over that quickly, if its even a thing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smuQ9D_qC5I

Effects

I've yet to find an Irish bee keeper using a Flow Hive.
I'd love to get a report on them used here though.
Still probably wouldn't buy one!

brianmc

Doctors room ghost wrote: »

Do people ever build their own hives or is it more practical to buy them ready made or flat pack.just wondering.always fancied having a hive but wife won’t have one around the place

The tricky bit is building it right. Measurements (internally at least) have to be millimetre perfect. Frames have standard dimensions and are designed to fit with how the bees naturally work. For the most part, gaps between any two components must be one "bee space". A bee space is roughly 8mm. If you make the gaps smaller than that, the bees will gum them up with propolis making it very difficult to separate parts and work with the hive. If you make a gap larger than that, the bees will build comb in it, again making the hive difficult to work with. Then there is the question of whether you leave a bee space at the bottom of each box or the top of each box for when they are stacked on top of each other.

Once you do your research and know what you're doing in that regard, the woodwork doesn't need to be high end cabinet making.

That said...

...I buy most of my equipment.

Advantages of buying equipment are...

I often prefer polystyrene boxes to wooden ones.
You can often be surprised at the final costs of building yourself once you count everything from timber to glue to finishing and buying/replacing tools.
The time... I don't have a lot available and if I was being paid minimum wage for it, self build would probably works 2 or 3 times more expensive than buying.

Sometimes, I'll build components like floors or crownboards. Usually this is because, like a lot of beekeepers, I'm pernickety about the details of design and functionality of what I can buy and build to meet my preference.


And finally... Top bar hives.

Top bar hives have become synonymous with supposed "natural" beekeeping.

Reality is that they were designed for environments and communities where materials were a bit harder to come by and accurate machining and standards would add expense. The design of a top bar hive allows for much more flexibility (and error) in design and building. They serve that purpose very well!

bpmurray

GreeBo wrote: »

The newer "Flow" hives look to make it pretty easy, though Im not sure how well they will look last after a couple of years (they seem to be ok based on a quick google)
Though it does seem to sterilize the whole process a little bit...but maybe you get over that quickly, if its even a thing?

That's the problem - their sales pitch is that the flow hive makes beekeeping trivial. The reality is that the normal hive management is unchanged, and the couple of hours you spend harvesting honey is made easier by paying €500 for a super that otherwise would cost €25. And the rest of their hive is also insanely expensive.

• Flow hive folk: Buy our super for €500 and the bees will look after themselves.
• Reality: Buy a hive for €150, spend all your waking hours worrying about the health of the bees. Harvest the honey from a single hive in a couple of hours. Buy a flow hive, pay 10 times the price of a normal hive, still have all the issues around keeping the bees alive, and spend 30 minutes harvesting the honey from a single hive with none of the joys of comb honey.