Where to Get Bees

Swarming is the natural method honeybee colonies use to reproduce as a whole. The original colony replaces the old queen bee, who leaves the hive with roughly half the worker bees and as much honey as they can carry. Swarm clusters land on a structure near their original hive location, while scout bees leave the cluster in search of a new hive location. It is in this stage that a bee swarm can be captured by an experienced beekeeper and used to populate an empty hive. Swarms are ready to start building wax comb in their new home 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 enough bee colony to split in early spring. This method of obtaining bees aids in the goal of propagating strong genetics for local bees and local honeybee populations. We have had the greatest success with bees caught from swarms in our own apiaries and find that swarms fare better than bees trucked across the country in packages.

For more information on swarm catching, watch this helpful video.

When scout bees find a suitable hive location, they return 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 premises gather at the entrance and fan their nasonov glands, releasing scout pheromone to direct the rest of the bees into the new hive. This pheromone resembles the scent of lemongrass oil, and beekeepers can use small amounts of the oil in their hives or in swarm traps to lure in a swarm. For new beekeepers hoping to acquire bees naturally, baiting a trap in the backyard can be a patient but rewarding way to work with bees’ own instincts.

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

Honeybee packages are screened boxes that contain a mated queen in a separate cage and 3 pounds of worker bees (about 10,000 individuals). Packages come from breeders and can be used to populate any hive style, including Top Bar hives, Warré hives, and foundationless Langstroth setups. They sell quickly, so find an apiary near you to reserve one as early as possible for a guaranteed source of bees for the season. A simple internet search for “package bees” will yield many results, but quality varies based on the source. When buying bees, look carefully at the supplier’s practices, and remember that shipping honey bees long distances can add stress before they ever reach your hive.

Watch a video on installing a package

Learn about how to buy package bees

A nucleus colony, or nuc, is essentially a mini-hive with 3-5 built-out frames of honey and brood, with 1 queen and enough worker bees to maintain and expand the hive. Nucs are available from breeders and apiaries, and are most commonly offered as deep Langstroth frames in a wooden or cardboard box, which is especially convenient for Langstroth hive users. These frames can be transferred into full-sized deep Langstroth hive boxes, and often build up faster than bee packages since they already have eggs, larvae, honey stores, and established resources.

Empty nuc boxes make great swarm catching containers; you 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 right away. An overwintered nuc can be especially appealing in areas with cold winters, since that small colony has already made it through a season. We will soon offer top bar nucleus boxes, and already offer deep Langstroth nucleus boxes.

A method used to populate new hives by beekeepers of all hive types is splitting strong colonies. Splits are done by moving frames or top bars of brood, including unhatched eggs, honey, and nurse bees, from a full colony to a new hive. This can be a useful way to start a second hive from bees already adapted to your apiary. Make sure the old and new hives have either an existing queen or unhatched eggs; the queenless hive can raise a new queen by feeding a larva from an unhatched egg only royal jelly.

Once the egg has hatched and has already been fed bee bread, the bee is destined to be a worker and cannot be made into a queen. Some beekeepers choose to buy a queen and add her to the queenless colony. We don't use this method because the colony can typically requeen on its own, and often we don't support the methods used to raise and inseminate most queens.