Our Waiting List for Hives

If you’ve already gone through a lot of our site, then you’ll have an understanding about why we have a waiting list for hives each season.

If this is the first page you’re looking at here it is in a nutshell. We’re able to provide only a limited number of colonies each year. We never know exactly how many until winter ends and we see how many colonies in our breeding program have made it. Additionally, try as we might, some of the colonies in our client’s hives won’t survive and we’re committed to replacing them as early as possible.

The end result is that we start generating a waiting list by the end of the year for the upcoming season. It’s a simple list. We don’t require deposits to get on it. Mostly what we’ll need is your contact information and address. So that we can get in touch with you as quickly as possible when the time comes.

We always hope winter will end early and we’ll be able to start delivering hives by the end of March. Usually it averages out to be around the end of April. And this is from the hives of ours that went through the winter. Also in the spring as our own, and many of our client’s hives, explode in size, we’ll be starting many new hives. We’ll make some of these hives available to new clients as Queens are fertilized and the colonies are stable and growing. Due to the nature of bees, when we do this, hives will become available in batches of two to six at a time. We’ll start going down the list again to see who’s ready to take a hive on shorter notice. So, if we’re able to get in touch with you and get a hive over to you quickly, you’ll get a hive faster. We generally will not deliver new hives to clients after the beginning of June because it won’t leave enough time for the hive to grow and prepare itself enough for the upcoming winter. The local pollen and nectar flows end during July and a client would have to immediately start supplemental feeding if the hive were to have a chance.

So, if you’re talking to us from July through March, all we’re able to do is get you on the waiting list for the coming spring. Usually 80% of the hives we’re able to provide year to year are already spoken for by the time we’re able to start delivering them.  This is just the nature of this type of business.