Getting Your Numbers Up.... advice needed from the big beekeepers...

[Chef Isaac]

I am trying to get my numbers up. The past few years, I have invested in packages with the intent of overwintering them and splitting them. This allowed me to make splits (increase in numbers) and make a honey crop. However, I have not had the best of luck with getting the numbers up.

To the big beekeepers... Sheri, Keith, etc.... when you all first started out, how did you go about getting your numbers up?

This year, I bought 28 packages and shook them into nucs. My plan is to let them build up, put another nuc box on top and let them build into that and then split them. Then overwinter them in nucs.

I am willing to forgo any honey crop in hopes to really work on my numbers. I would love some advice and guidance from others.

I decided to do packages versus nucs because I thought that bringing in nucs on frames from other people could lead to a desaster as far as using other peoples frames.

[Keith Jarrett]

Well Chef,
I would start by working with two or three other commercial keepers even if you work for them free you will learn alot.

There are alot of do's & dont's and no one "right" way of doing things.

Myself, my year is coming to a snail pace :). The bees are on summer locations, shaking is over with, now just making up duds & requeening.
My yearly income is Feb-May, after that only about 10% is left to come in.

Oh, I could chase that carrot with the bees but I dont think it's worth it, I would rather spend my time doing other things.

Chef, getting your numbers up, many different ways, syrup is the cheapest way.Sometimes doing less with your bees is easy'er on them and you. That is how I run mine,which would leave you more time to make divides if that is your goal.

Keith

[Dan Williamson]

Chef, getting your numbers up, many different ways, syrup is the cheapest way.
Keith

Keith... what about pollen patties? :eek:;):D

[Keith Jarrett]

You got me on that one, Dan.:)

Here in Calif the black berries are in bloom and has a heavy pollen flow.
That's whats hard, how can you help someone when your clue-less about thier area.I don't know the Washington state area.

[Dan Williamson]

How do YOU make your patties Keith?

Sorry. I just couldn't resist!:rolleyes:

[JohnK and Sheri]

I am trying to get my numbers up. The past few years, I have invested in packages with the intent of overwintering them and splitting them. This allowed me to make splits (increase in numbers) and make a honey crop. However, I have not had the best of luck with getting the numbers up.
This is basically how we did it as well.
Am I correct in remembering that you are not treating your colonies, trying to select out the survivors? If this is the case, it will be difficult to gain in numbers until you have developed a bee that will survive winter untreated.
Winter survival is important, otherwise you are just replacing your losses (with additional unselected genetics), not gaining numbers.

This year, I bought 28 packages and shook them into nucs. My plan is to let them build up, put another nuc box on top and let them build into that and then split them. Then overwinter them in nucs. This seems like a lot of wasted potential to me, if I am understanding you. Have you done this before or know someone in your area that does? It would seem you could gain more than just two nucs from a package installed in the spring. Maybe you plan on three or four nucs going into winter per package? Any package I ever bought would hit the trees if I tried to keep them in 2 nuc boxes, unless you plan on splitting them very early on. Even then....
Why not let them build naturally?
I must be missing something here. I would rather go into winter with one strong colony (then split in the spring) than two small ones.
Back to growth, if your survivor colonies are good in spring, make a couple walk away splits from each and then overwinter them, leaving your strong overwintered colonies as honey producers. No packages to purchase at all and you keep your genetics.
Keep in mind I am no bee geneticist, (there are inbreeding considerations) and my viewpoint is colored by my harsh climate. Maybe in yours wintering nucs works well.

I decided to do packages versus nucs because I thought that bringing in nucs on frames from other people could lead to a desaster as far as using other peoples frames.

Most (all?) commercial outfits I know expanded by buying out others equipment, often with bees included. I see a lot of hand wringing about spreading decease. Most commercial beeks are not overly worried about that, they treat their bees as needed (let's not get into the politics of that, please, we are talking how to grow here). Of course, throwing CCD, SHB, and Nosema C into the mix necessitates a bit more caution than in the past.
We grew by purchasing packages over nucs from a purely economic standpoint;they were cheaper, and if we got them early enough they would still make a honey crop and grow to winter well in Wisconsin. Initially we put most of those packages in used woodenware. When you look at the cost of new, if you are thinking of fast growth, the cost is almost prohibitive. Being able to afford the growth is a big issue.

It will be interesting to hear how it goes no matter what direction you go. I have thought about wintering nucs as a means to overwinter late queens.
Sheri
Gosh, Keith, if you have so much spare time why don't ya come on out and help with the supering?;)

[Keith Jarrett]

Gosh, Keith, if you have so much spare time why don't ya come on out and help with the supering?;)

There your "sign" Chef, Sheri & John need help. :)

[high rate of speed]

Well Chef,Keith pretty much said a mouthful.Helping out other commercial keepers would be your best hands on,most of their motions are similiar in alot of ways.But tweeked a little one way or the other.With timing,weather,honey pollination etc.good luck. Ps. Keith dont say your favorite word.[SILVER-SPOON]. :):)

[Keith Jarrett]

Ya HRS,

I was thinking 7500 hive, Taunto. siver spoon. :)

OOPS.

[Gregg]

A couple of options on expanding: slowly (and go into debt slowly), or quickly (and go into a lot of debt in a big hurry) :)

I grew quite slowly, here's my hive count over the years:

1992 - 6 1993 - 3 1994 - 2 1995 - 15 1996 - 25

1997 - 48 1998 - 55 1999 - 128 2000 - 166 2001 - 240

2002 - 303 2003 - 320 2004 - 377 2005 - 444 2006 - 505

2007 - 600 2008 - 600

I bought packages early on, and quickly got away from that, as I didn't think they were worth it. I bought some nucs and single hives after that and the last few years have been able to make splits in the Spring to increase (have been migrating to CA since 2002). Also bought a lot of used equipment along the way.

[Chef Isaac]

Thank you all for the advice. I appreciate it. I have been helping a side line beekeeper here and there. Do to my full time job, this is where I am at.

Sheri:

Yes, I might be able to take more splits off. I have never done it this way before. I have found, the past three to four years that overwintering in a deep split in half ( a nuc on both sides) works out very well for our area. This was versus a double deep and a single 5 frame nuc. I thought I would give it a try on a larger scale.

You are right. I do not want to use chemicals. But I do see your point about bringing them through the winter. It was sorta funny as they say to breed off of your survivors. Hard to do when there are no survivors in ones operation!! :)

I should complain too much. I have been growing but seems like it is the winter when I take my losses.

Maybe this is the road that one takes before finding a better line of queens that work well in this area.

Keith: I have been thinking and reading a lot about bee nutrition and I know how important that is.

I am just trying to figure it all out.

[Michael Bush]

Make strong splits from strong hives. Small weak splits don't take off very well. Hives that are split down too small don't do well. In other words, the split should have at least three frames of brood a couple of frames of honey and a lot of extra bees shaken in. It's surprising how many bees a booming hive can lose to splits and still be back to the same level by the next week. This is not at all true of a smaller struggling hive. Try to keep both the original and the split at "critical mass" for populations. If you're raising queens, then give the splits a queen cell that is about to emerge. This will buy them 10 days or so in getting a laying queen over raising one from scratch.

[Gene Weitzel]

Chef,

Is there any possibility of doing cut outs and swarm calls in your area? I have increased my colony count by 34 since the first of April via this method and get paid for my services as well. There is a learning curve for sure, and you will lose a few at first but it does not take long to figure it out. Once you have some resources, you can be near 100% on them since you can do things like giving a swarm a frame of brood to anchor them and when you have spare queens you can split a large cutout up into nucs right as you cut them out.

[Jim Fischer]

One can't afford to buy packages at current prices and expect to
make a profit on the hives stocked with the packages quickly
enough to avoid getting caught in an expensive death spiral
of package -> dead out -> package 2 -> overwinter -> crop.

I call the above a "death spiral" because your problem here
is that you are both feeding bees to make more bees and
feeding bees to draw comb.

The only actual asset a beekeeper has is his inventory of drawn
comb. Bees die, woodenware rots, trucks break, honey houses
burn down, trained employees quit.

So, you have to make splits, and buy queen cells or mated queens.
I disagree with Mike, and unlike him, I've actually grown to hundreds
of colonies by splitting everything in sight. The difference likely is
that I fed them all, and fed them all summer and into fall. Feed
makes bees. Lots of pollen traps, lots of hive-top feeders.

You can try lots of approaches, but if you want to grow to a
profitable sideline operation, you are going to have to learn the
equation "feed=bees". Making 3-frame splits and turning one
overwintered colony into 3 or 4 splits in April is a skill anyone can
learn, if they are willing to work at it.

And there just aren't enough hours in the day to grow by gathering
swarms. The price of gas makes the chasing around very expensive.

[Michael Palmer]

I have found, the past three to four years that overwintering in a deep split in half ( a nuc on both sides) works out very well for our area. This was versus a double deep and a single 5 frame nuc. I thought I would give it a try on a larger scale.

All I can say Chef is...as Arlo said, "Inch by inch, row by row," or as James Herriott said, "Big 'uns and little 'uns."

You answered your own question. You've discovered that bees will winter in double nuc boxes. Take advantage of that. Make as many as you are able. Get what you can through the winter, and do it again next year. Over the next few years, you'll take two steps forward, and one step back..."Big 'uns and little 'uns," but will be increasing as you go..."Inch by inch, row by row."

[MichaelW]

I've been learning the last few years how to make splits. This year I had overwintered 25 colonies and turned that into about 71 splits and hives. I feel like I could have added AT LEAST another 40 splits (within the last month) if I ordered more queens, but I certainly don't have time for that, and would like to make some honey too. I barely split some hives. I did this with very little extra drawn comb in storage over winter. 7 boxes, I think.

I think the best way to expand is overwinter healthy colonies, not in nuc boxes, but in a full sized hives. Then get your queen order in from a good company as soon as they will accept the order, so you can get the earliest shipping date. I ordered queens in two shipments, with a 2 week period in between. This way your parent colonies build up and then you split them again. To upscale this, maybe go with 4 shipments, or more. In early spring add boxes of drawn comb if available to make the hive as large as possible before queens arrive. Its not unusual for a buddy of mine, whom I'm learning from, to have his home yard loaded with 4 deep colonies in early spring waiting on queens. This year the first set of queens arrived right as swarm cells where developing, which is perfect timing. While I was making splits with queens, I also made splits with cells. I pulled every bit of capped brood out of many of the hives I split, leaving some only about a single medium of drawn comb. The parent colonies build the comb back quick, if you give them foundation. They are much slower on empty frames.

I didn't feed any this spring, the splits or the hives before splitting, but we are having an exceptional flow this year. I agree with the statement though that feed=bees. Once the flow starts winding down, splitting and/or building comb requires sugar water. I also agree that in the end its easier to make strong splits then make week ones. Especially if you split with capped swarm cells. There has to be enough bees to incubate the cells, since you don't know if they're incubated. You also have to figure on a lot of bees going home, for the splits left in the same yard. If the mating splits are made up fairly strong, they will mate the queen and it will build up ready for sale, or use, in no time at all (when your busy doing other stuff that is).

I don't see how anyone can afford to expand buying splits or packages, unless your doing significant pollination contracts. Just the cost of equipment and queens is plenty of cost. I have a full time job too. Doing about twice or four times the splitting I did, would work you hard, but it would be over soon. The key is to have all the equipment painted ready to go no later than March 1 (in my area). If I wasn't in school, and was really devoted to it, I would say 4 times what I did would be the max. for someone with a full time job. But you got to consider what you are going to do with all those hives!!! Selling them isn't that easy either. People will schedule and cancel, change their minds, and not read email, (even though they reply to it) while nuc boxes are busting with bees. I do like meeting the people that do show up though, and understand that things come up for those that don't. I've thought about deposits, but its not really a problem finding more people that want to buy bees.

Good luck!

DISCLAIMER: Obviously I'm not a big beekeeper. I am getting bigger, but I'm on 165 pounds right now.

[Keith Jarrett]

The only actual asset a beekeeper has is his inventory of drawn
comb. Bees die, woodenware rots, trucks break, honey houses
burn down, trained employees quit.
.

I agree 95% with this, other than my honey house is steel :).
In my first post here, I said syrup is the cheapest way to make increase.

This year I took twenty DD and made 100 three framers, right now there back to ten framers. So, if i wanted to I could break them back down to three framers, that would put me at 300.

So you can go from 20---300 with a alot of syrup (sucrose).

Chef, shut off the computer, get your hinney out there, and go make up your boxes!! :)

Too much talk and not enough action. That's what Toby Keith says.

[Chef Isaac]

Keith:

What is holding me back is too much "normal" job. I wish I could spend less time working and more time with the bees!!! :) i can only spend Monday with them. Maybe I just need to split them a little harder and keep feeding more throughout the year.

[Barry Digman]

I am just trying to figure it all out.



If you're like me, you reach a point at which you have to stop trying to figure it out and just start doing it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone around here use the phrase "He was just too dumb to know he couldn't do it...". In other words, he did it. They're typically talking about someone who has achieved a degree of success that suprised everyone, including themselves. In most cases, it was attributed to simply putting one foot in front of the other. Not everything worked, there are setbacks and mistakes and those "duh" moments, but after every one they just put that foot out and kept moving. I'm certainly not a large scale beek, but I'm pretty confident that you can grow by ...... growing. Good luck.

[Keith Jarrett]

Keith:

What is holding me back is too much "normal" job. I wish I could spend less time working and more time with the bees!!! :) i can only spend Monday with them. Maybe I just need to split them a little harder and keep feeding more throughout the year.

BD, that was a good post.

Chef, the only thing holding you back is... CHEF !

I am a first generation keeper, I started with 3 hives. I work the bees,construction rental bussiness & my RE rental business.

So I dont buy what your saying. :)

[d.asly]

Jim Fisher writes about increasing: "Feed makes bees. Lots of pollen traps, lots of hive-top feeders."

What does he mean by "lots of pollen traps?"

[Kelbee]

Hey Chef,
If you haven't already, check out this article out of a recent Bee Culture.

www.mdasplitter.com/article.htm

Among other things, Disselkoen describes serial splits of a single overwintered hive into as many as 16 hives by years end, which can be split into as many as 64 nucs the following spring.

[Chef Isaac]

awesome read

[BEES4U]

The plan looks good on paper.
But, you may find what is called in statistics"The Point of Diminishing returns."
For the plan to work the bees will need an endless supply of quality food and extended photo period.:)
Be prepared to move the bees to new pastures as old one diminish.
In the old book ABC & XYZ of Beekeeping it was called divide fever. Be very careful not to wind up with a lot of nucs to weak to winter.
regards,
Ernie Lucas Apiaries