Archive Special: Packages and Nucs with Kim Flottum (214)

Episode 214 – Archive Special: Packages and Nucs with Kim Flottum

Jim Tew: Hey, listeners, Jim Tew here. We're going to be gone for a short time, but while we're away, we hope you enjoy this short archive segment that we produced for you.

Kim Flottum: There's a lot of ways to get started keeping bees, but today we're going to look at packages and nucs. I've tried everything you can try over the years of ways to start a colony, but I want to look at nucs and packages today, because that's how most people approach this, at least initially, because that's all they know. Hi, I'm Kim Flattom.

Jim: I'm Jim Tew.

Kim: Welcome to Honeybee Obscura.

Introduction: Welcome to Honeybee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: When you lose a colony, how do you replace it? Not just losing it. On those occasions when you wanted to increase numbers or whatever, if you wanted bees, if you're getting started, if you're replacing winter losses, packaged bees is always the easy way to do it. There's no reason for you and me to live in the past, but they used to be two, three, four, five-pound packages, queenless, whatever. They were all kind of options, but really pretty much all that's left now are something close to three pounds and a queen. What happens now for most of us is you buy a small swarm and it comes in at your convenience. You don't have to chase it around and have the box under the limb. It's just in a screen wire box there ready to go for you. It comes in the springtime, good time of the season.

Kim: One thing to keep in mind is that screen wire box is becoming less and less common. Now it's a mesh plastic box. All things considered, the folks that came out with that did a good job in figuring out how to least hassle the bees to get them out of that box.

Jim: Those are really nice contraptions, Kim. I'm sorry you didn't prepare me for discussing this, because after those bees are out of that box, I thought, what can I do with this thing? Can I use this to grow irises or as what, as a cage for something? It's really a nice box and it's collapsible. To my knowledge, it's recyclable too.

Kim: It's recyclable in that somebody is going to make the box go away, but you can't get it back to the people who use it because they don't want it back because they don't know where it's been while you had it. It's destined for the trash. I'm wondering, I'm getting a little bit off the topic here, but I'm wondering if power washing one of those would probably do a pretty good job for somebody who's going to reshake, shake bees into it. That's for another time.

Jim: We didn't, neither one of us prepared to go down this path, but I'm enjoying this because you could power wash that thing. Of course, you've got to chase it all over the yard doing it, but you could figure out some way to hold it and you could do a decent job cleaning it up. It's a well-made box. I know there's someone out there who can say, hey, this box could be used for, and there it is.

Kim: Yes. The thing is that from the people who use them, they're cheaper than the wire, the screen and wooden box packages, because although the components cost more, there's almost essentially no labor involved in putting them together where with the screen and the box, it's a lot of time. When you're going to get, if you're going to get a package, it's probably going to come in that white plastic box. It may come in a screen and a wooden box, but either way. You're going to get a package, Jim.

Jim: The price of those has gone up, hasn't it, Kim? Everything used to be stopped living in the past, Jim. It's a meaningful cost now to buy a package of bees. It's meaningfully expensive to produce those bees. I'm not implying that the packaging queen producers are doing anything unfair. They had a lot of work in controlling Varroa and in building bees up strong enough to shake them out. That was something I can't always do. I have to admit the fact that I need to be more careful. I need to know what I'm doing. I need to be better read than I used to be. Shake the package and do the best you can with it. It's really convenient and easy to get started in bees by buying packages.

Kim: What's the other advantages of a package?

Jim: It's contained. It comes in on the date that you shipped it. You're ready for it. Your equipment's put together. Your yard is set up. It's easy to do. I guess the main thing is if you're new to beekeeping, you start in the shallow end of the pool. if you buy a hive or if you decide to buy some five frame, six frame split, you hit the ground running much sooner. If you want to grow when you're beekeeping experience, a package is the way to go because you and the bees start small and then you grow.

Kim: Yes, they're slower to develop that's for sure than a nucleus colony. There's good and bad with that because they are slow. They need a lot. I always tell people you got to hold their hand longer.

Jim: You do?

Kim: Yes, and they are more dependent on the weather than a nucleus colony would because there's no stored food and lots of times there's not even any comb. You're shaking them on foundation or plastic.

Jim: It is really bare bones, isn't it?

Kim: Yes. You as a beekeeper are really responsible for making sure that package, those bees in that package get off to a good start, which means a lot of food. Right off the bat, they got no place to store it. It's essentially hand to mouth.

Jim: It's also worth saying, Kim, that with a package, once you release those bees and you go back for a look, maybe five, seven days later, you may have appreciably fewer bees than you have when you release them because there's been a steady die off, a normal die off of bees that's occurred during that time until those bees can build comb and the queen lays and can begin to produce replacement bees. You'll actually have a population drop for a period of time there before they can recover.

Kim: It's probably, I'm going to say, probably a week before you've got any noticeable egg laying going on. There's a week and once those eggs have been laid, it's three more weeks before they begin to emerge. You're looking at a month before, that population is going to drop for a month before it starts building up. If you're getting these in May, you're not really doing anything until June. You may start earlier if you're in the far South, but not a lot because the beekeepers who are selling you those packages don't have the bees to sell them until probably April.

Jim: All right. Yes. I was thinking, now you started this thread now. You went down this path so here we go. It's an easy way, dependable way to get started. It really means your first winter is critical, doesn't it?

Kim: Yes.

Jim: Especially if you started with nothing, 10 frames of foundation. Those bees have got to build up, they start from nothing and the first winter with a package of bees is going to really be a trial by fire.

Kim: I'm going to go back to springtime again, early summer. The queen that comes with that package, if she's healthy and sturdy and willing to go, she'll be okay. Within a week she'll start laying and she should be laying, initially probably a couple of hundred eggs a day, maybe up to 300, 400 the first week or so. Your population is going to start building down the road three weeks. If she isn't mated or they don't like her or she gets lost or she dies, then you got another delay you got to look at.

Jim: Oh, you really do.

Kim: Yes. Again, as a beekeeper, you got to make sure they have enough food, but you got to make sure that the queen's doing what she should be doing.

Jim: I'm trying to think how to put a bandaid on that, Kim, and it just, it's not going to work out well to say this. If you lose a queen in a package, unless it just happened almost right away, unless she was almost dead or was dead when you opened her, it really almost isn't worth it to try to go get a queen and get that going unless you have other bees to subsidize that delayed package.

Kim: Yes.

Jim: That's really going to be set back. With all they've got to do to survive that first winter, getting an even later start, it's going to be really tough for that little unit.

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Kim: If I run into one of those problems and I don't have any other bees, what do I do? That's why people always say get two packages instead of one. If you were listening to what they had to say and you had two packages, then you could combine those two. You'd have one big package, but at least you wouldn't lose half of them come next winter.

Jim: This is not a recommendation, Kim. I didn't want to do it, but I had to do it. I did exactly what you just described. I forget how many packages I bought just past season, 10 or 12 or so, and queen didn't work in one of them. She didn't work quickly. I had other bees I could work with, so I combined it. I had a 6-pound package. That thing turned into a monster beehive. I could have split it three times out. From a work ratio standpoint, you're better to have more bees. They'll build up faster, and then you can split those out more comfortably at your leisure later on. It was critical that I had other bees to work with. That may not be fair to beginning beekeepers who don't have that really valuable resource.

Kim: It sounds like you also had drawn comb to put them on too, right?

Jim: I did.

Kim: Yes, so if you don't have drawn, even if you don't have drawn comb, that double number of bees is going to be a better shot at making it than by itself. If you got a package and it goes south on you, then what you want to be able to do is to be able to combine them. If you're going to get a package, you get at least two or more. Kind of insurance, I guess you'd look at it that way so that some of them make it through. There's another way to do this, and that's to get a nucleus colony.

Jim: Yes, about the same money, isn't it? Maybe more overall. What's the price range?

Kim: The packages I'm looking at in the journals are 125 to 150 somewhere, and nucleus colonies, depending on how many frames are with them, are going to be more because the beekeepers got more invested in that. If I said 150, don't be surprised. They're still all going to be all over the map, but a nucleus colony is probably going to cost you more than a package colony, but you're getting more.

Jim: Yes, I wish there was a set list of questions that could be asked, but a nuke isn't a standard thing. How much brood is in there? Particularly how much brood is in there? How many adult bees came with it? Where did you get this queen? How old is she? She is this year's queen, right? There's all these questions. I guess it could be said that sometimes a bigger nuke may not be the same value as a nuke with fewer frames, but more of a brood population and maybe a better queen that was running that package.

Kim: Yes, there's always discussion. Do I want a queen from this year, brand new or do I want a queen that's overwintered? There's some advantages to both. The queen from this year is going to be young, but you may run into the same problem with that this year's queen that you had with the package queen if she's brand new. Whereas if you get one that's overwintered, that she was producing well last year and she got the colony through the winter. She and the beekeeper got the colony through the winter and now she's going to be laying. That's the question you're going to be asking is, open brood, sealed brood, and how much of each should there be when you get that nucleus? The typical nucleus is probably five frames, right? Let's just say that's what you're going to find.

Jim: Yes, I'll go with five, yes.

Kim: What's on each of those frames? What should be, do you think?

Jim: There should be some honey and I'd like for it to be capped, not just open. There's probably a little bit of pollen and I'd like for on that five frame, two frames of brood or so, capped, good clear brood pattern. The more the better, but out of that five, probably two to three frames of brood. Basically some food, some good queen, brood in all stages, and about five frames.

Kim: I know often you'll see four good frames and one empty frame, but it's drawn comb. There's some room for expansion there. I guess I don't have a problem with that, with they've got some place to go right now.

Jim: I don't either. See, the thing about this nuc thing we're talking about, Kim, is there's so many more variables. There is nothing standard. It's going to really depend on the beekeeper knowing someone or the beekeeper having access to someone who's producing these. Since this is not like you just order it, routinely and a truck shows up, you probably got to strike a personal deal with someone to literally go buy a part of another person's beehive that you can use to start your own.

Kim: A lot of times that's the case, but I'm telling you, there's more and more people out there right now who are making nucs for a living. They're going to have, they did their splits last fall and they overwintered that split and it's ready to go about the same time as your package is going to arrive. You're seeing more and more of that happening because there's not as much money in honey as there used to be. Pollination season hasn't started yet. I can be making money on bees early on.

Jim: I don't disagree with that at all because I often hear, when you're talking to the person, I like both by the way, Kim, I really like if I could do anything and I was buying bees in the spring of the year, I'd use both techniques because it gives me a lot of diversity and options. I have to hear every time, "Well, I've already withstood the winter losses from getting these things through the winter." That's true. If the person made the splits the previous fall, then they've already withstood the economic risk of getting that unit through the winter to be able to sell it to me next spring. It's a different ball game, isn't it from package production?

Kim: Yes, it's a lot different. If you're just starting out, if you're just getting going at this, there's a lot of questions that you're going to find the answers to, hopefully not the hard way.

Jim: That's true. Is there an easy way to find those? If there are easy ways, I'd like to get back to you on that.

Kim: You mentioned finding somebody. Of course, that brings up visions of having a mentor. If you've got somebody that can, after a couple of weeks, can come and take a look at that and say, yes, let's do that, this is good queen, lots of, or not. If you're not sure what you're looking at, you're not sure what you're seeing and what it means. If you've got a chance to get somebody in there to take a look at both your package and/or your nuc, that's always a good thing to do. I'm finding that a lot of people, there's just not a ton of people out there that got that time or resources. The second best thing to do, show me a picture. Everybody's got a camera anymore.

Jim: Well, that's true. Yes, that's true.

Kim: You could take that brood frame, lay it down, take a picture, send it to me and I can probably take a look. If you took the picture right, eggs, young larva, old larva, sealed brood, how many of each? There's a way you can get around not having a mentor, only because everybody's got a camera anymore.

Jim: At the end of this segment, I want to be sure they get your name and your address. Yes, that'll picture or tell you a lot, but sometimes these issues are complicated. We really have a nice possibility now with these quick photographs everyone can take that are really remarkably good and detailed.

Kim: Another nice thing about a nuc is if it came relatively strong, as we've already described it, enough brood and enough bees and a good queen, there's an outside chance you may make some harvestable honey this year.

Jim: Yes.

Kim: At the same time, you're probably going to have harvestable varroa this year because it probably came with varroa and/or you've got brood with varroa in it already. That's one thing you got to watch.

Jim: I've taught myself that big, healthy, nice colonies grow big, healthy, nice colonies of varroa.

Kim: Yes, they do. The upside of nuc is that it's big and strong. If there's a downside, it's going to have some issues with varroa if you're not

on top of it so neither of these are perfect. If I was going to do one or the other, I think I'd probably go back to a package. It's a year behind a nuc basically but I got more control.

Jim: I like that. I want both techniques. In a good year I'd like to use both options, but if you said just one, Jim, just choose one, I would have to go with packages. It's just simpler. I know what the problems are. I'll do the best I can to address them. It really takes out a lot of the variables to go with a package.

Kim: Yes, takes more time, more work, but you get more control, at least in the beginning.

Jim: Yes.

Kim: There's advantages and disadvantages to both, depending on if bees are putting food on your table, you're probably not going to look at packages as much as you are nucs. if you're doing this for fun and learning, a package isn't a bad way to start. I'm going to try both this year.

Jim: Should I say that, right? Yes, I guess I hadn't had a chance to think about it. Let me say, I'm going to try packages for sure, and I'm going to keep the nucleus option on the table.

Kim: Good idea, good idea. That wraps this up. Packages and nucs to get started with bees, and the advantages and disadvantages, at least some of the advantages and some of the disadvantages of both of them. At least now, hopefully, you've got some ideas or questions to ask before you get started. I'm going to go order my package, Jim. I'll see you next time.

Jim: All right. I'll be looking forward to it. Talk about something else next time. See you.

[00:21:52] [END OF AUDIO]