Mail Order Beekeeping Supplies
I’ve been buying my woodware from mail order houses. There are no retail bee stores within easy driving distance. I would much rather touch the stuff that I am going to buy, but I can’t so I have to make do with a brief description and a fuzzy picture.
The main problem with buying hives and supers via mail order is that they are heavy. The shipping costs are nasty. I’ve been paying upwards to $60 every time I make a big order.
I decided to spend a few minutes Googling for beekeeper supplies and make a list of websites, their locations and the cost of three items so you can compare. It is better, however to buy from a nearby location than the cheapest place. The shipping price can triple to send heavy boxes across the country.
I want to compare the price of 1) a 10 frame hive kit with top and bottom board and frames. 2) a medium super unassembled. And 3) a cheap bee feeder.
The list is quite short. I only chose websites that were high on the Google list and I only chose websites that had the products that I wanted to compare. There is a deep hive kit that consists of a hive and super that goes for around $100 at Dadant, but Dadant.com did not have the single hive body kit. The deep hive is good deal, but it would not compare well here. I was also amazed at the range in cost of the beginner’s complete kits. They went from cheap to expensive, but I don’t have the time to figure out why.
Some stores don’t have ecommerce stores and you have to fill out an order form and mail it in. I even found one place that had good price stuff that didn’t accept credit cards. I could set them up with a paypal store in a few hours.
The List:
| Store | Location | Unassembled Hive Kit (45 pounds) |
Unassembled Medium Super (7 pounds) |
Entrance Feeder (less than 1 pound) |
| Betterbee | Greenwich, NY | $61.95 (styrene top. Pierco frames) | $11.55 | $2.00 |
| Brushy Mountain Bee Farm | Moravian Falls, NC | $56.95 | $11.50 | $2.35 |
| Mann Lake Ltd. Store | Hackensack, MN and Woodland, CA | $78.50 (assembled) | $9.35 | $2.95 |
| Ruhl Bee Supply | Gladstone, OR | $83.00 (assembled) | $15.00 | ? |
| Sacramento Beekeeping | Sacremento, CA | $69.85 | $13.95 | $3.95 |
HoneyFlowerFarm has a very nice resources page that lists these and others. Many, however, have broken links or do not have ecommerce set up.
Please email me with your favorite online store and the prices you found. These are all east or west coast, what happened to the middle? Where is Canada, Australia and England?
