Why Are Two Hives Better Than One?

We get a lot of new beekeepers reaching out to us about starting their first hive, and I get mixed answers when I ask them how many hives they want to start.  Many will say 1, others 2, and some as many as 10!  While I think starting with 10 hives might be a little ambitious, read along to see why I think 2 is the perfect number for most people if the budget allows.

Pros and Cons of 1 or 2 Hives

Let's be honest, beekeeping isn't a cheap hobby.  Generally speaking, if someone is wanting to start 2 hives in their first year, between the hives, suit, smoker, gloves, bees, etc they will spend around $1500.  That's nothing to sneeze at and of course we understand some budgets may not allow starting with two and that's ok.  But if your budget will allow, we think starting with 2 hives is actually easier and will learn faster than starting with 1 hive.  Starting with 2 hives allows for a couple different things, comparing the two hives and also additional resources to borrow if needed. 

If you just have 1 hive you have nothing to compare it to, and it's all new to you.  There might be some glaring issue and you're not seeing it because you think everything looks fine.  But, if you have 2 hives and are regularly inspecting both of them then you might notice one is really strong and one really weak.  That would lead you to probe a little deeper into the weak hive, wouldn't it?  Weaker hive might have just not gotten as good of a start, may not have been as strong as the other colony, or might have become queen less. By being able to compare the two hives, you've given yourself more data to make decisions on.  

You're also able to steal resources if you have multiple hives.  With just one, if you become queen less and there's no eggs in there then you have to look for a queen locally or order one online and they are not cheap.  If you have two hives, you might be able to take a brood frame with fresh eggs and move it over to the queen less hive and let them raise their own queen if the time of year is right for that.  Maybe you don't have a queen less hive and just have one stronger than the other for whatever reason, you can take a frame of capped brood from the strong hive and place it in the weaker hive.  The weaker hive has just been given a much-needed boost from the stronger hive as that capped brood will be emerging soon and will boost the number of workers in that weaker hive which strengthens it.  It's important to give the weaker hive capped brood as they will not need cared for other than temperature regulation whereas uncapped brood is going to need nurse bees to tend to the eggs and larvae and then cap them, resources they might not have. 

But I LOVE bees, why not start with 10 hives or 20?

There is so much to learn before you get bees and still so much you learn while going through your first year as a beekeeper.  Beekeeping isn't for everybody.  It's hard work, and wearing a bee suit in 100 degree weather lugging honey supers around is not easy and it's really got to be something you enjoy.  Sometimes people think they would love to be a beekeeper and after a couple years realize it's just not for them, if they had started with 20 hives they'd have spent a ton of money to realize it's not for them.  

We also see a lot of failures in the first year, every beekeeper will have some failures.  Their bees might swarm, losing half of the colony and cutting the chances of a honey harvest from them that year.  Colony might be weak and get robbed out, queen killed and then the colony dwindles and isn't caught soon enough.  Colony might be weak and pests come in and take over causing the colony to abscond completely.  There are lots of different reasons a first year beekeeper might fail, but very frequently they do not take varroa mite management seriously.  All through the country right now I am hearing from new beekeepers that their colony died during winter.  Varroa mites can spread diseases like deformed wing virus, but often they just weaken the colony.  Varroa feeds on the fat bodies of bees and weakens them.  Colony might look just fine going into winter, nice size, good amount of stores, but all of a sudden they die.  Often that's caused by varroa mites weakening the bees so they can't store energy like they need to and they don't make it through winter.  These new beekeepers will blame the cold but it's really the varroa mites that decimated the bees' ability to deal with the cold more so than the cold itself.  If that new beekeeper lost two colonies, it's an expensive lesson but they can overcome it much easier than 20 colonies, buying 20 nucs that following spring will be very costly!