Wait a second, if I become a beekeeper, how do I get started? I have a thousand questions and no one to answer them. We are going to look at just ONE of the issues that affect new beekeepers and that is what I need a pack or core of bees.

When my friend and business partner, and I, started in beekeeping, I think we were misguided. It was recommended to get packages. Knowing what I know now, this was a mistake. Today I would say spend the extra money and get a core.

Option one, a nuc. What is a nucleus? A nucleus is the nucleus of a hive. A small bee colony scaled down from a standard eight or ten frame hive, placed in a smaller five frame box, with base. The nucleus contains the queen, nurse bees, guardian bees, drones, and workers. One nucleus has a laying queen. A laying queen means eggs, the eggs must be present so that the workers can feed and raise a queen cell, if something tragic happens to the queen, such as an injury. In this case, the workers choose an egg to raise as a new queen. It is quite an interesting process.

Option two the package. What is a package? In short, a bee box consisting of a caged queen and a few thousand worker bees. Caged the queen is not a barbaric practice, it is a way to keep the queen separate from the other bees that would try to kill her because they don’t know who she is. They put her in the cage and in the package just before the package was shipped. In regards to that, none of the bees in the package were probably known before they were put into the package. The way the bees get out of their hives in the field to the box known as a pack is that they are shaken from the frames of large hives in the bee yard, to a funnel-like apparatus, and then to the well-known filtered box. as a package. Once the proper weight of the bees is in the box, a can of sugar syrup is placed on top of the box with the queen in a cage hanging down in the package secured by a piece of strap. When removing this you must be very careful not to drop the queen in her cage into the bee mass, or someone has to reach up to the bees and remove the queen cage. Why? You will probably get bitten a few times while you retrieve the queen’s cage. The queen in her cage is fragile and must be handled with care.

Packages are more difficult to install. The cores can be collected from the beekeeper and transported to your home, where they will immediately begin collecting food to feed the colony. Packs take longer to establish once in the hive, hopefully the queen will be fine and a good brood-laying pattern will begin. In a nucleus, this problem is alleviated because the beekeeper makes the bees settle in a good climate when he collects them. The beekeepers’ job with a package is to take it to a honey core or hive for the “settling” process to begin. Hopefully, if all goes well, they “settle in” in no time and start working together. In a nucleus, they are already working together when the nucleus is taken. They are a colony.

In conclusion, I think that the core, although a little more expensive, is better for the new beekeeper in the long run than the package. There is a learning curve and the core is easier for the beginning beekeeper, the core is set, while the package is not. There is much more chance of failure with a package than with a kernel!

Have a good day!