Beekeeping: when is the best time to buy bee swarms?

Buying hives, equipment and purchasing swarms or queen bees are obvious and fundamental steps for anyone wishing to pursue or start their beekeeping business. Each of these steps has timelines and periods of the year in which it is best to intervene.

The work of the bees is always continuous. Bees never go on vacation. Knowing their internal calendar, behaviors, blooms and needs, is important to plan all activities and our interventions.

Let's start in chronological order with the various activities indicated for each period of the year.

The preparation phase of the apiary

January

During the month of January, a good beekeeper takes care of the entire organization of his breeding in advance. In a nutshell, we can say that January opens with a series of activities outside the hive, a sort of organization of the space around it. Buying hives and organizing for proper installation in the space available is an activity that we always recommend to carry out during this period to find yourself already ahead of the work in the future.

Here are some tips on installation and placement:

There are some tips that are useful when deciding on the positioning of your apiary

• Prefer a ventilated place so that moisture does not stagnate:

if possible choose a shady place during the hottest hours of the day in order to avoid excessive work by the bees who have to ventilate and collect water for the colony;

• Opt for a quiet place and possibly with good nectar sources to get good harvests
• Do not place the apiary near roads subject to continuous passage of cars and flooded with exhaust substances present in the air.

February

This is the month in which bees start looking for pollen and water for the first brood. To allow this work to take place at its best, the beekeeper will provide for nourishment (without overdoing it!) And dissolve some salt in the trough. This measure, just a spoonful of table salt in 5 liters of water, is used to avoid the removal of the bees which, due to the arrival of cold weather, migrate in search of mineral substances.

Important: the nourishment of the hive depends on the area and the surrounding blooms and must follow a certain criterion, without overdosing. The queen is not an inexhaustible source of eggs and, like all living things, needs periods of activity and rest. The beekeeper will have to monitor the queen's behavior and the evolution of the family following nutrition.

Purchase swarms of bees

The purchase of swarms, cores and queen bees usually takes place starting from the month of March / April . It is advisable to buy bees already in spring so that you have the whole season ahead.

In March, the beekeeper carries out careful control work usually carried out every ten days. The checks carried out are used to understand how the bees behaved, the conditions of the queen and if there are families of bees left orphans.

Usually March / April are the months for shopping! If you are interested in buying swarms, parcels or queen bees this is the right time to do it!

Buy swarms of bees online

With Apicoltura Laterza you can buy cores, swarms, bee packs and Queen Bees directly online. You will receive your order in no time. We ship our bees professionally and safely and provide you with a health certificate on the health of all bees.

When planning a purchase of bees, it is always important to plan in advance and therefore we always advise you to book the bees you plan to purchase months in advance. This way you can not only buy bees at a cheaper price but also ensure 100% availability for the spring season.

Usually during the months of March and April the price of bees tends to increase precisely due to the high demand from beekeepers.

Precisely for this reason we recommend that you buy bees in pre-order . By purchasing now in pre-order on Apicoltura Laterza you can also take advantage of a 15% discount On the total of your cart by entering the coupon code that you will find in our ​​Home Page .

Buy now Queen bees , Nuclei , Swarms or Packs of bees !

Harvesting

May

The month of May is usually the month of harvest in which the bees are in a higher productive state, the highest compared to the other months.

In fact, in the month of May the bees stock up on pollen and reach maximum productivity. At this stage it will be necessary to check the health of the queen bees, if they are old or have exhausted their reproductive function, they will have to be replaced.

Usually the production phase then tends to fade in the month of June when due to the heat the blooms dry up and the Bees tend to be less productive.

Provisions

In the warmer months, more precisely in the period of July and August, beekeepers take care of protecting the bees from excessive heat and try to move the apiary to shaded places away from the sun. 

September

The month of September is the month in which bees take action to stock up on honey and pollen that will allow them to survive in the cold season.

This is the period of supplies.

After a thorough check of bee health in November, the cycle of the year begins again. We will therefore return to the December / January phase in which we will be able to evaluate new investments to expand our apiary and in this period we will buy and organize the placement and installation of new hives .