Purchasing Bees

Beekeeping - Basics
1

Hello everyone,
I recently purchased a 7 frame flow hive. I am shopping bees now and I am completely at a loss of how the bees actually get into the flow hive.The websites I am shopping from say purchasing a nuc is the way to go. So do the bees stay in the nuc? Or do I have to transfer them into the flow hive? Please help!

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Hello and welcome to the Flow forum.

If you are in North Carolina (your profile says NC), then you should not be thinking of setting up a new hive until March or April next year. That is good news, because you have a lot of learning to do before you can be really helpful to your bees. :wink:

The first thing that you need to do is join a local bee club. Go to their meetings (many are virtual now) and learn as much as you can. Try to get somebody there to take you on as a mentor. Do NOT say that you have a Flow hive to start with. Many traditional beekeepers are suspicious of Flow hives. Just say that you are wanting to start a new Langstroth hive (yours is a 10 frame Langstroth, even though you have 7 Flow frames). Plus read as many books as you can about beekeeping.

The way it works is that you transfer the bees into the brood box of the Flow hive. DO NOT place the Flow super on top at this point. When the brood box has fully drawn comb and a packed population of bees, you can put the Flow super on top. However, you may need a second brood box in NC, and that is why I suggest you join a local club. They can tell you what they do. If they use double brood boxes, you should too, and you should NOT put the Flow super on top until both brood boxes are full first.

From your questions, you really need to read and learn a lot. There are many books that can help with that, but you may find it helpful to join https://www.thebeekeeper.org to help you with the concepts that you need to be a good beekeeper. It is a subscription service, but you can try it free for a month to see if this is the right thing for you.

All the best :blush:

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Hey Natalie! Welcome to the forum :tulip: Like Dawn said, this time of year in our parts of the world is for the quieter activities of beekeeping - the only buzzing you’ll hear will be all the posts from our Aussie friends who are in the thick of their spring season now :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:!

It’s great that you are getting into beekeeping and I hope you and your family have a good adventure. Please do look for experienced local advice and mentorship for when it’s time to suit up next late winter/early spring in your area, and meanwhile stay tuned here because you’ll gather a ton of helpful insight just by reading. Flow has beginner beekeeping videos too, or you can look up “installing a package or nucleus colony of bees” to see how it’s done.

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