Whether you are a seasoned beekeeper or a new-bee, you will want to populate your hives in the jump. For united states here in the Pacific Northwest, that ways April through early June. The increasing popularity of apiculture however, requires that bees be purchased, reserved or planned for months in advance. We recommend securing your source for bees by Jan if you plan to offset a hive the following spring.

Below are some of the almost mutual ways to obtain honeybees for your hive.

swarms

Swarming is the natural method honeybee colonies reproduce as a whole. The original colony replaces the old queen, who leaves the hive with roughly one-half the worker bees and every bit much honey as they can carry. Swarm clusters country on a construction virtually their original hive location, while scout bees leave the cluster in search of a new hive location. It is in this stage that swarms can be captured and used to populate an empty hive. Swarms are gear up to first building comb in their new dwelling house immediately.


Swarms are local to the area they were found in. They are guaranteed to have survived the winter in that climate, and were a strong plenty colony to split in early on leap. This method of obtaining bees aids in the goal of propagating potent genetics for local honeybee populations. We have had the greatest success with bees caught from swarms in our apiary and notice that swarms fare ameliorate than bees trucked across the country in packages.


For more than information on swarm catching, spotter this helpful video .

Bee Swarms

BAIT & TRAP

Bait and Trap Bees

When sentry bees find a suitable hive location, they render to the cluster and direct the swarm to the new hive location with the waggle dance. Once the swarm reaches their destination, the first worker bees on the bounds gather at the entrance and fan their nasonov glands, releasing scout pheromone to direct the residuum of the bees into the new hive. This pheromone resembles the scent of lemongrass oil, and beekeepers tin can utilize small amounts of the oil in their hives or in swarm traps to lure in a swarm.


Check out these books for more information about how swarms observe new hive locations, and about setting swarm traps.

packages

Honeybee packages are screened boxes that comprise a single inseminated-queen in a cage, and 3 pounds of worker bees (nigh 10,000 individuals). Packages come up from breeders, and tin can be used to populate any hive style. They sell quickly so find an apiary virtually yous to reserve i as early as possible for a guaranteed source of bees for the season. A simple internet search for "package bees" will yield many results. Quality of bee packages varies, based on the source.

How to buy a bee package
Sentinel a video on installing a package

Learn about how to buy package bees

Bee Packages

Nucleus boxes

A nucleus colony is essentially a mini-hive with 3-5 built out frames of honey and breed, with 1 queen and plenty worker bees to maintain and expand the hive. They are available from breeders and apiaries, and are most commonly offered equally deep Langstroth frames in a wooden or paper-thin box. These frames can be transferred into total-sized deep Langstroth hive boxes, and oftentimes build up faster than packages since they already have eggs, larvae, and honey stores.


Empty nuc boxes make great swarm catching containers; yous tin can allow your swarm to start building comb in the nuc box and transfer the comb into a compatible hive, rather than needing to install a swarm into their permanent hive correct away. We will soon offer top bar nucleus boxes, and already offer deep Langstroth nucleus boxes.

SPLITS

A method used to populate new hives past beekeepers of all hive types, is splitting strong existing colonies. Splits are washed by moving frames or top bars of brood including unhatched eggs, honey, and nurse bees from a total colony to a new hive. Make sure the old and new hives take either an existing queen or unhatched eggs; the queenless hive can raise a new queen by feeding a larvae from an unhatched egg but purple jelly. In one case the egg has hatched and has already been fed bee breadstuff, the bee is destined to be a worker, and cannot be fabricated into a queen. Some beekeepers choose to purchase a queen and add her to the queenless colony. We don't employ this method because the colony tin can requeen on their own, and often we don't support the methods used to raise and inseminate most queens.