> As I mentioned before, there are a lot of advantages to packages

One of the biggest advantages has not yet been mentioned - a full-sized hive
or a nuc has a population that can seem intimidating to the new beekeeper on
several levels, thus creating a barrier to the learning of basic "hands on"
skills.  

Too many bees make it difficult for the novice to do much of anything
without crushing a bee, combs that can be propolized into place" take some
force, and then move abruptly, and so on.  The first summer of beekeeping is
really nothing more than a period when the bees to train the beekeeper in
developing style and panache in hive manipulation, something that is far
easier to learn with new, clean equipment, and an initially smaller
contingent of bees.   As the beekeeper gets a few skills, the population
grows to offer just slightly more challenge.

Regardless of how the novice starts out, we have seen many queens appear to
lay well, and then suddenly  become drone layers, or be superceded, which in
very urban areas, means superseded by a queen that has slim chances of being
mated at all, due to a lack of a critical mass of hives to produce drones.
Jeff Pettis has been mentioning this on and off in various talks he has
given this year, as he noticed it impacting both controls and test colonies
at very high rates. 

	

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