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Buying Nuc vs Package Bees

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Buying a nuc vs package bees is something to consider, especially if you live in a colder climate like we do. Here in Montana where we only have a few warm months out of the year, honeybees spend a good portion of the year inside the hive because it is too cold outside to leave the hive. This means that our honeybees have less time to make honey than honeybees living in a warmer climate. When starting a new hive with a nuc or package bees, there are pros and cons to consider for each method. 

Buying nucs vs package bees- which is better? | Montana Homesteader

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Buying a nuc vs package bees isn’t something we even thought of last year, our first year beekeeping. We were so busy learning about the basics of beekeeping that we didn’t spend any time researching the difference between a nuc or a package of bees. Instead, we took the advice of the local beekeeping club president and put our name on the list to get a package of bees through a regional company. 

Our experience with package bees

We bought two packages of honey bees last year. Our bees arrived in May. Each package of bees was inside a small wood box with a wire screen around it and the queen in a little box. There was no comb at all.

a package of honey bees compared to a nuc of honey bees | Montana Homesteader

Queen honey bee in a queen cage in a new package of honey bees | Montana Homesteader

We hived them in our homemade Langstroth boxes, which you can read more about here. They settled in well and thrived with all the hundreds of acres of alfalfa surrounding us. But they had to start from scratch in the hive and spend a lot of energy  building out comb and filling it with brood before they started focusing on filling frames full of honey.

We live in a colder climate, so honeybees are not active for over half the year. This means that last year when our two bee packages arrived in May, they had about four months to build new comb, hatch new bees (you can read about and see the life cycle of a honey bee in this post) and produce honey. Around here, most folks harvest honey from their bee hives in early September.  In our short warm season, that does not give the honey bees a lot of time to produce a lot of extra honey for us to harvest.

Our experience with a nuc of honeybees

This winter my husband started reading more about nucs. A nuc in the beekeeping world is basically a small box set up as temporary hive with a couple frames inside, a queen bee and her worker bees. In the picture below you can see the larger hole on the bottom front of the box where the bees enter/exit their temporary hive.

A nuc of honey bees compared to buying a package of honey bees | Montana Homesteader

Nucs tend to be a little more expensive than a package of bees, but they are well ahead of the game when it comes to production. Which ultimately means the ability to make more honey for us to harvest in our short season! 

We found a family run apiary advertising on the local Craigslist in our area. We bought three nucs from them and met them at a truck stop off the highway to pick up our new honeybees. What a sight it was! (Unfortunately I didn’t think to get a picture, I was so excited about our new bees!) The back of their pickup truck was filled with small white cardboard boxes each filled with five frames, a queen and her worker bees. There was a small hole on the front of the box for them to enter/exit and a few small air vent holes. For the ride home, they taped the entrance closed so the bees stayed inside while we were driving. 

transporting nucs of honeybees | Montana Homesteader

We picked our bees up just before sunset so decided to wait until morning to put them in their new bee boxes. Hiving nucs is a different process than hiving a package of bees.  All you have to do is carefully remove the frames, one at a time, from the cardboard box and place them into the bee hive box (this handy tool makes the job much easier than just using a gloved hand!)

a nuc of honey bees is more productive in a short warm season compared to a package of bees | Montana Homesteader

Inside a nuc of honey bees and hiving them in a Langstroth bee box | Montana Homesteader

My husband let the cardboard nuc boxes sit out by the beehives for the day so all the bees could make their way into their new hives with the queen. Like last year’s package bees, the queen bees are marked with a dot of paint so you can see them. 

The pros and cons of nucs vs package bees | Montana Homesteader

My husband went out to check on the new beehives a few days after they were put into their new home and they were already filling up the rest of the frames! He put another super (box filled with empty frames) on top of each of the new hives already. Last year with our package of bees, we didn’t need to do that until mid June and here we’re a month before that! 

Nuc vs Package Bees-and the winner is? 

If you guessed Nuc, you are correct! If you live in a cold climate with a short warm season, getting a nuc is definitely the way to go. Around here, the nucs cost about $20 more than package bees but it is well worth it to get a month ahead in production. We’ll easily make up that difference in money and more when we harvest honey in a few months! 

Which do you prefer, nucs or package bees? 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Excellent article. Until this year we’ve had hundreds of wild bees to pollinate our gardens and fruit trees but this year it’s like they’ve vanished. I hadn’t planned on getting into beekeeping yet but may have to do so. I live in the desert SW and used to see bees dipping water from my swimming pool. So if I get hives will I have to put out water for the bees? Don’t have a pool anymore.

    Reply

    • That’s sad to hear you aren’t seeing the wild bees anymore but I think it is wonderful you have an interest in beekeeping! We don’t keep a water source on our property for the honeybees. They will travel as far as a couple miles for water. There are several creeks, rivers and irrigation ditches not too far from us so they have a lot of access to water. If you don’t have any water sources within a couple miles from your home, you might need to put out some water for them.

      Reply

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        Reply

      • My prayers go out to the family, I know how difficult this is and is going to be. I lost Patsy in June and you are going to experience some “firsts” in the coming months. I hope in the future the good memories you have built will become a source of comfort.

        Reply

  2. We prefer nucs too, have bought 3 now. We’re in northern NJ & packages just don’t seem to make sense to us, though there are those who espouse the virtues, even in our local area and club. But our club also does a big group nuc purchase from a local apiary every spring.

    Good luck with your girls!

    Reply

    • We just heard that one of the big local deliveries of package bees was yesterday, almost a month after our nucs arrived! It amazes me to think that our nucs are so far ahead of the game than those package bees since the nucs came with frames AND arrived weeks before. Whereas the package bees are just starting from scratch now. Good luck to you too 🙂

      Reply

    • This is the right blog for anyone who wants to find out about this topic. You reailze so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would waH€at¦Hâna). You definitely put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great!

      Reply

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      Reply

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      Reply

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      Reply

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      Reply

  4. I’m so grateful to have found this blog! I live in Missoula and all I think about are bees and their forever fruit. While in the process of looking for our first home, we are since unable to venture out as first time keepers. Do you have a good reference for me to contact for bee keeping classes? Maybe one day I’ll be at Bee Day as well picking up my bees… so exciting!

    Reply

    • How exciting you want to start beekeeping! If you are in the Missoula area, check out the Emma Dickinson Lifelong Learning Center classes this winter. Every year there is a beekeeping class offered at an affordable price in the winter/spring session. This is the class my husband took and it was REALLY helpful. There is also the online beekeeping class at UM but it is expensive. Good luck!!

      Reply

    • The folks we bought our nucs from last year is Outdoor Bee out of Spokane. Here’s their website with all the info on the nucs they sell and a phone number to contact so you can order. They were great to work with and we’re planning to order more nucs from them again this year. http://www.outdoorbee.com/nucs/

      Reply

      • Näistä kuvista tulee niin kamala kivitalo kuume 🙂 Jos lottovoitto tulisi, niin heti lähtisi kivitalo rakentaen. Kivitalossa on aina se oma henkensä, joka on mun mieleeni… Kateellisena jatkan talonne vauismtlmisen seuraamista =D

        Reply

      • Happy New Year! Now drop your plastic grape juice cup in the receptacle next to the ash tray on your way out of exit C-1. This is a tragic way to spend New Years…not even fireworks?! Why bother? Just let the churches organize something. That’s the excitement level we’re talking about anyway.

        Reply

      • btw … re: the topic of email communication with commentorsIf/when you operate a reputable blog and someone takes the time to communicate with you, directly, via email, so as to refrain from needlessly bunging-up the regular goings-on at that blog, then, it is good policy, and basic politeness, to respond to that person, in-kind, via email.My two cents worth

        Reply

  6. Bump. We are up in Kalispell, ditto that last comment. Much more interested in getting a couple nuc’s now. Slightly concerned about disease – are these inspected, or just bought “as is”?

    Reply

  7. Wonderful! So simple. Now we know all pros and cons of the form. Try PDFfiller to fill NV DoT NUCS-4073 here http://goo.gl/Cdsz3F. It allows you to to fill out PDF files.

    Reply

  8. I am interested in getting a couple of hives going at my cabin but lack enough knowledge. Where do I start? I could use the names of the bee suppliers you use, if that is ok?

    Reply

  10. My brother had a buddy thats into bees and got him into it. Well first off he stings himself and him dog for health reasons and they both are doing very well from doing it, and it doesnt even bother the dog at all but saved him life . Now my mother just passed and i had moved in with them to care for her. We just lost her on the15th of Feb. Its been so hard on my father and we are trying to thi k of things tokeep his mind working as hes 85 and he doesnt know whatto do without my mother as they were married for61 years. So hes coming out of retirement and going into the bee keeping business lol yes my brother is going to care for them and teach me so im looking to learn how to not only use the honey but wanting to make candles and things for our health. We put honey in our coffee,learning to cook with it and not stepping up to making other thing. I totally love your site andtha ks tons for sharing with all of us .

    Reply

  11. Any advice on a source for nucs over in Missoula? We are entering our third year beekeeping and lost 1`4 hives last year to the fires in the Bitterroot. Starting from scratch basically.

    Reply

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