4 Things To Consider Before Buying Bee Colonies When it comes to rearing bees, you need to focus on more than one aspect. Starting from procuring the colonies to frames, you need to make sure that you do everything right. As maintaining an apiary is far from easy, it makes sense for you to evaluate the queen bee and the colony before you choose to buy them. All you need to do is prepare a list of the parameters and see if they align with your needs. When you are sure that they are, you can go ahead and buy queen bees online in Illinois. Here are some of the things you should consider when you wish to buy queen or bee colonies for your apiary: 1. Laying pattern of the queen First, you should start by considering the laying pattern of the queen. For best results, you should look for a queen that is evaluated and is deemed fit for a colony. You need to check whether the designated professionals look at the brood pattern before deciding on the bees’ qualification. Ideally, you should prefer to get a bee that comes with a solid-crapped brood pattern. Not only does this ensure that the queen will be ideal for your setting, but this also ensures that you will get better results in less time. 2. Survival in winters Next, you should check the degree to which the queen bee and the colony have survived in winters. To get an accurate idea about their survival instincts, you should ask the professionals about their methods to check their survival. One of the most common ways to do that is to ask the concerned professionals if the bee colony and the queen you wish to buy have survived one or more Chicagoland winters. If you are sure they have, they are ideal for your apiary. 3. Previous honey production levels One of the most important things you need to do is check the previous honey production levels before moving ahead. Since this indicates the honey production capacity of the bees, it needs to be examined before you proceed further. It will help if you see that the bees have produced more than 125 pounds of honey in the previous year. You can do that either by asking the designated professional or looking at their records (wherever possible). 4. Temperament of the colony