Spring 2024 - 5 Frame Nuc Deposit
Bell Farm 2024 Iowa Hybrid nucs
Our Spring 2024 nucs will be $225 each + sales tax. In order to reserve a nuc, please place your order and pay a $100 depoit now. The remaining balance of $125 + tax will be due upon pickup.
Our 5 frame nucs will come loaded with bees, 3-4 deep frames of brood, 1-2 deep frames of resources, and one actively laying, marked, Iowa Hybrid queen. Nucs will come in a plastic corrugated nuc box that is yours to keep.
All nucs must be picked up at our farm in Runnells, Iowa (please note that we do not ship bees). We anticipate that nucs will be ready for pickup in late May and early June 2024. We try to fill orders in the order in which deposits were received.
We will contact you in May to coordinate a specific pickup date. Please be aware that nuc pickups are generally in the morning between the hours of 8-9 am. We do this because it's best for the bees to be moved early in the morning, and to prevent overheating of the nucs. If you will be traveling from a long distance, please plan accordingly.
When ordering, please select your preference of a new (2024) or overwintered (2023) queen. All requests for new queens will be honored. If your preference is an overwintered queen, please note that we will try to honor that request, but cannot make any guarantees. Because we have a limited quantity of overwintered queens to sell, we will honor those requests on a first come, first serve basis, based upon when we receive your deposit.
What are Iowa Hybrid bees?
You may be familiar with other breeds of bees such as Italians, Carniolans, or Russians. Our bees are considered an Iowa Hybrid breed. We select strongly for gentleness, winter hardiness, low mite counts, and prolific brood production. All queens are raised by us from our own Iowa wintered stock. They are a fantastic, gentle, and hardy bee.
What makes a Bell Farm nuc different?
- We raise our own queens. We do not purchase queens from large scale, commercial queen rearing operations. To ensure good quality and low supercedure rates, we never bank our queens.
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Our bees spend the winter in Iowa. We believe that creating strong, winter-hardy bees for Iowa has to begin with wintering them here.
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We mark all our queens. Have trouble spotting your queen? You're not alone. That's why every one of our queens is marked before she goes out the door.
- We raise our own queens. We do not purchase queens from large scale, commercial queen rearing operations. To ensure good quality and low supercedure rates, we never bank our queens.
What if you can't fill my order?
Because we are selling our own bees, rather than reselling bees from another supplier, we are dependent upon our hives to come through winter strong and healthy in order to fill our nuc orders in the spring. In the event that we should experience higher than anticipated winter losses that would cause us to be unable to fill your nuc order, please know that we will refund your deposit in full.
Can I pick up my bees earlier?
Our nucs will not be ready before mid-May at the earliest. Often, we are still filling nuc orders into June. Keep in mind that we are raising our queens in Iowa, meaning that we are constrained by weather conditions here. If you want a nuc that's ready in April, then our bees are not the best choice for you.