We talked with some bee breeders in CA about the upcoming bee season and they expressed concern about the quantity and quality of bees they will be able to produce for the 2023 season.
They have bee yards in multiple areas and they have stressors in most yards (draught, local flooding, some even lost hives to fires).
Commercial operations are planning more on recovering their colony numbers and strength than selling packages or nucs for starter hives.
At this point, we decided not to bring live bees for sale for the 2023 season.
If you are getting started in beekeeping in 2023, we’d recommend you try to get bees from a local beekeeper (they could sell you a nuc from a split or you could catch a swarm).
If you still want to buy packages or nucs, we would recommend contacting your local bee association. You may need to wait until February, as suppliers confirm the number of colonies they can sell after they evaluate their overwinter survival rates.
The following beekeepers contacted BeeManiacs and confirmed they are going to be selling live bees during the 2023 season. You can find more information on their websites:
https://halfmoonbees.myshopify.com
