"Another solution to this one would be to educate the buyers to to buy trash."

But they often don't get that education, and/or they buy from what they think are credible sources....and then when they open their little "Pandora's Box"...i.e., when they arrive at home and open their precious nuc(s), they have no experienced help alongside to tell them that they have a mess instead of a decent starter colony.

Anyone who has had bees for a couple of years can easily tell a poor nuc from a good one.  Those people should go right ahead and buy nucs, because they know enough to complain right away and return a bad product.  They know enough to dump those old combs ASAP, and as Allen points out...they know they are buying the bees and not the old equipment that is being "rotated out" by the nuc supplier.

To protect the novice without a mentor, however, I'd say buy a package.  A package provides good practice...the newbee has to manipulate the bees into their new home, and they can observe the queen right away (and can tell if she is alive!) so they know what she is like and then they have a better chance of finding her later.  Also, since they must get into the new package hive more often than they have to get into a nuc...once, to set it up; twice, to make sure the queen is out, then again to see if she is laying properly...they are also more likely to start working the hive in timely fashion than a newbee with a nuc.

With a nuc, after it is first installed, many novices have a certain reluctance to get back into that hive after installing it, using "let it settle in" as an excuse to procrastinate.  In contrast, by the time the new package queen is laying, the newbee has had to get into the hive at least twice and usually has finally gotten up the nerve to work the frames, so they hopefully see more of what is going on early in the colony-building process.  There is a steep learning curve for a newbee, and a package helps with that in ways a nuc does not.  By the time a newbee really  gets into and understands what they are looking at in a nuc that was a bad buy to start with, and then finally calls for help, it's often too late.

Christina

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html