The Cost of a Nuc Hive

[Jimbo]

At our local association we require to produce a number of nuc colonies for new beekeepers members in our association. In the past we would provide a swarm for free but they are few and far in recent years so the members are specifically asked to produce some nucs. The committee set a minimum rate of £50 for a 5 frame nuc. What do other associations do and how much do you charge for a nuc for new members of your association? What do you think is a fair price etc?

[Jon]

Tricky issue Jimbo.
If people give away swarms for free, usually those who have swarmy bees who run out of equipment to put all the casts into, it undermines the organised bee breeding efforts.
A lot of people will wait to get free bees rather than paying for a nuc with a grafted queen from selected best stock.
Same applies to selling a nuc as £50 barely covers costs. The 5 frames alone are worth £15 and you will have to fight to get the box back.
You lose half your life trying to get empty nuc boxes returned and mostly you don't see them again.
We are trying to coordinate our local organizations to provide standardized nucs at a fixed price.
I would be looking at something like £150 for an April nuc headed by an overwintered grafted queen in a 6 frame Payne polynuc which is worth £40 in itself. The beginner keeps the nuc box.
The beginner would get 3 or 4 sessions of tuition with the nuc at an association apiary before taking it home.

The plan is that the nuc of bees is sold as a package with tuition and a poly nuc box for maybe £150.

Check the prices.
Thorne see a queen for £48 + vat + carriage, ie about £60

Their nucs which are sold out anyway were way over £200.

We have not started this yet but we have had meetings to discuss it and hope to get things going soon.

[The Drone Ranger]

The correx flat boxes you fold up were about £10 a few years ago still a bit steep.
Wonder if they are cheaper in bulk
They held a 5 frame nuc

Although £125 is a big investment for a nuc it should pay for itself the following year if the purchaser can make a nuc up for sale
I am hopeless when it comes to selling anything and always end up out of pocket by a long way :)

[Jon]

I am hopeless when it comes to selling anything and always end up out of pocket by a long way :)

You and me both DR. If I had to live as a salesman I would starve to death.

I bought 10 of those correx boxes and then realised that I could make my own for next to nothing.
I have over 20 of my own, sadly now empty as I lost most of my overwintered nucs.

[Black Comb]

We charge £100.
But, a new beek will need to pay for the introduction day plus the course as well.
Of course these are not available yet, interesting to see when.

[drumgerry]

There's always the argument that if you price something a bit higher then the buyer will appreciate what they've got and work harder to keep it. I think under-pricing nucs is a mistake given they're so hard to come by and we're all working so hard to keep our bees going. We should be pricing them at market rate - private individuals and associations alike. I don't think £150 is unreasonable for a nuc in this day and age.

[prakel]

I don't think £150 is unreasonable for a nuc in this day and age.

Agreed. Under pricing does no one any favours. It's not so many years ago that the average price for a pound jar of honey was somewhere around the £1.20/£1.50 mark, kept that low by local beekeepers selling on the door and simply under valuing their product. Thankfully times have changed.

[Trog]

I think £150 is reasonable. Let's face it; if any of us who are producing nucs were to lose all our bees through some disaster (eg poisoning/fire) we'd be very unlikely to be given replacement bees for nothing.

[fatshark]

This year our association members have been told to expect to pay £120 for a nuc in April or May. None were available in April and I've agreed to sell mine at that price this month. These are overwintered, locally raised 2012 queens, 5 frame (or possibly 6) nucs meeting BBKA or NBU 'guidelines'. This price is about 20% up on last year. The nuc box is returnable ... and anyone who has seen my woodworking would be unprepared to pay for it anyway.

The reality is that there are almost none available. Most association members suffered severe winter losses.

Overwintered queens (from mini nucs) will be £25-40 depending upon their parentage.

I think these prices are reasonable for both the seller and the buyer. I think the price Jon suggests for bees, tuition and a poly box is perhaps too low ... or exceptional value, depending whether you are the buyer or seller.

I think a good solution for the "free bees" brigade is to provide requeened swarms mid-season for the price of the queen. That is both great value and helps the local gene pool. I'm keen to establish a quarantine apiary here in which all swarms are housed, treated for mites, requeened and then moved on.

However, I'm still chuffed when an association member thanks me for the queen/nuc I gave them late in the season and tells me how well they overwintered. I benefitted from such acts of generosity in my first year and I hope it is a tradition that continues.

[Jon]

The correx flat boxes you fold up were about £10 a few years ago still a bit steep.
Wonder if they are cheaper in bulk

DR
Forget your £10+ folding correx boxes and make a few of these with OMF and 50mm insulation on the top. About £2 should cover it, 50p if you can live without the mesh floor or the insulation.

1505 1504 1502 1503

[Black Comb]

What is the material you use Jon and where do you source it?

[Jon]

election posters

You can see the staring eye of the wife of a Nobel prize winner in the insulation. (Daphne Trimble)

[madasafish]

I have just sold a TBH nuc - 5 frames brood, 2 bees, 2 stores to an acquaintance for £100 - price agreed last year. If I had more to sell, I would be charging £140 -last year I charged £120.The price excludes the nuc itself but includes delivery and installation. 50 mile radius.

More an act of love than commercial but TBH nucs for sale are rare in spring.

[prakel]

I have just sold a TBH nuc - 5 frames brood, 2 bees, 2 stores to an acquaintance for £100 - price agreed last year. If I had more to sell, I would be charging £140 -last year I charged £120.The price excludes the nuc itself but includes delivery and installation. 50 mile radius.

More an act of love than commercial but TBH nucs for sale are rare in spring.

Surely such a nuc deserves to be priced at least a third over a similar sized bog-standard nuc on frames. Specialist kit demands specialist prices. There are still plenty of people with the funds who are willing to pay for a quality product. If it doesn't sell, who cares? Turn it into two June nucs and sell them.

[Dark Bee]

Nucleus hives are selling in the Dublin/Wicklow/Wexford area for 250 euros.

[greengumbo]

Nucleus hives are selling in the Dublin/Wicklow/Wexford area for 250 euros.

A local elder beekeeper tried selling me a nuc for £240 the other day.

[The Drone Ranger]

This is my favourite Nuc building advice courtesy of the Beekeeping forum and Youtube
Guaranteed to cheer you up and get you making one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=2ltfKbCsrZM&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67D08jRYqg
Reminds me that beekeeping is fun
Thanks to Pete :)

[Jon]

A local elder beekeeper tried selling me a nuc for £240 the other day.

A shortage will always bring out a few opportunists.
Can you imagine the same chap if he lost his bees next winter being expected to pay that for a nuc to start up again.
In my experience some of the people who ask top dollar are not even prepared to pay for bees themselves when they need them.
I mentioned in a previous post that local (elderly) beekeepers who have lost their bees just leave empty (non sterile) equipment at my father's house and expect him to put in a 'spare' swarm.
The better beekeepers are supposed to give away bees year in year out to keep the PP beekeepers going.

That's why I think local associations should work together to set a fixed price which is fair to all - which rewards the seller for his effort but without ripping the arse out of any shortage.

[prakel]

There's a fine balance to be drawn as well with regards to being competitive with the made-to-order commercial market if you're trying to rear local bees. Setting prices which encourage people to look elsewhere has got to be a big negative for a local breeding group.

It's a hard call. I'm totally against bees being passed around cheaply/for free (unless it's to valued friends or people you know to be genuine) simply because I think that a lot of start-ups over the last few years have been kneejerk reactions (by people who otherwise would never want to go near a bee hive) to sensationalist reporting. Some will stay the course -hooked; most, I think, will fade away fairly quickly.

[drumgerry]

Jon your Dad must be a patient man to put up with that. They'd get short shrift from me.

[Trog]

If someone dumped used hives at my apiary uninvited I'd let them know that they would be burned as a health hazard if not removed immediately!

[Jon]

Jon your Dad must be a patient man to put up with that. They'd get short shrift from me.

I would not entertain that behaviour either.
I know others who get similar treatment and it is the same duffers cadging bees off them every spring.
All they are interested in is getting a few supers of honey at the end of the summer but they don't seem to know how to manage the bees.


I think that a lot of start-ups over the last few years have been kneejerk reactions (by people who otherwise would never want to go near a bee hive)
Prakel, I bet you had a mental picture of a fluorescent plastic beehaus when you wrote that!

[Adam]

I sell a few nucs at £120 inc the box. Overwintered ones are a bit more. (Maybe I should have charged a LOT more this year!).
If someone doesn't want the box, they can bring a hive and put the bees in there whilst they inspect them. (Inspections encouraged). Collection can occur a few days later, one evening. The hive must be clean (often it's new) and they are asked not to bring gloves; I have disposables.

Local election day today- maybe I can find some correx. As long as it doesn't have Nigel Farrage staring out. That would be quite offputting. Need to go around the back of the "Fallen Angels" nightclub and see if they have any old publicity boards. :)

[Mellifera Crofter]

... and make a few of these ... About £2 should cover it, 50p if you can live without the mesh floor or the insulation.

You clearly know of a convenient source of free correx, Jon. I've searched around a lot and only found a few scraps from B&Q and they've now stopped using it - so no more from there.
Kitta

Sorry - I thought I've reached the end of the thread. I can now see you've replied to the same question: a convenient supply of election posters. K.

[Jon]

A guy from my BKA went round to one of the election offices and collected several hundred which measured 48 inches by 32.
they are glad to get rid of them.
The nucs I make need a template 40 by 32.
The base is 18 by 10 and the sides 11 inches high.

1507

[prakel]

The travelling boxes which Thornes make are quite a nice design and would be dirt cheap to replicate.





Prakel, I bet you had a mental picture of a fluorescent plastic beehaus when you wrote that! :)

[The Drone Ranger]

Some years ago I just used to close up a hive and then have the person collect it
Once they transferred the bees and frames they brought the empty brood box back
Weather would intervene and sometimes a couple of months went by but the boxes always came back eventually :)
Since the foulbroud problems in Perthshire and Angus it's too risky to do that

[Jon]

It was Keith Pierce from Dublin who put the idea in my head about letting the beginner keep the nuc and adding it on to the price of the package as he has been doing that for a while with his nuc sales. It removes the hassle of trying to get the box back as well as any disease risk. A beekeeper always needs a spare nuc box or two anyway and when the first swarm arrives there will be somewhere to put it into temporarily.
If you buy the Payne nucs 30 or more at a time in the sale each nuc plus eke costs £20.50 carriage free and the normal price is £39.50 plus carriage.

[The Drone Ranger]

Lol !
30 nucs that would last me a while
Much better price though :)
pouring rain today agin!! dagnamit!

[Jon]

I bought 63 in the sale but only kept 2 for myself as they were distributed among association members.
Economy of scale and all that.