It's Time for Bees!
We're awaiting the start of False Spring in the Pacific Northwest (next week!), that time when the sun makes us happy and hopeful, but then it's very cold and/or rainy outside. But that means that real Spring is coming and with that, beekeeping season! We're busy doing equipment maintenance and getting everything organized for the season ahead. If you are a beekeeper yourself and your hives didn't make it through the winter (or you're starting out) it's time to purchase bees!
We've been supplying bees to backyard beekeepers for 8 years, and are excited for a brand new offering this year!
Golden West Bees
If you dig around on the internet to learn about bees or regularly attended your local bee club, you've probably encountered Randy Oliver's Scientific Beekeeping site. He is a wealth of information, and we are excited to offer Golden West Bees by Randy & Eric Oliver for the 8th year. These are the bees we've built our apiary from, and appreciate his queens that have been bred for gentleness, mite resistance, honey production, and winter survival (and Randy's high elevation means his bees also experience rain, wind, and snow, just like our bees up here).
New this year we will be offering packages with Golden West Queens as well as the Olivers' Golden West nucleus hives. We are expecting delivery for packages end of April and nucleus hives the first weekend of May. We love these bees because they encounter high elevation weather (snow!) and do well in the Puget Sound. Delivery dates are always weather dependent. We aren't the absolute earliest nucs available, and we are proud of that! These nucs contain five full frames of bees, brood, and honey, and the queen has been laying for an entire brood cycle. These are real, strong nucs.
Queens and Local Nucs
We also have some locally raised nucleus hives still available, with one of the unique traits that we have medium nucleus hives available! When we were hobbyists we wanted to purchase medium framed nucs but couldn't find them, so we made them ourselves.
Honey bee queens are coming next week! We will have lots of various queen genetics throughout the year, including Old Sol Queens and our own locally produced queens. Contact us to find out what's in stock.
Benefits of Buying Bees through Rainy Day Bees
Purchase bees (or classes) with us and you will receive an invitation to our private Facebook group where you can ask questions and have access to an expert beekeeper throughout the rest of your beekeeping journey! You'll also be sent a video with how to install your nuc or package, and we guarantee all of our hives for three weeks after pickup.
We're one of the few beekeepers vetted and approved by the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association! We have people come from all around to pickup our bees including: Whidbey Island, Everett, Snohomish, Lynnwood, Carnation, Seattle, Shoreline, Tacoma, Redmond, Bellevue, and all over King County, Snohomish County, and Pierce County. We've even arranged delivery to Olympia and Vashon.