>I'm confused on what you're prescribing for getting away from the norm written above. Can you elaborate?
Can I elaborate? Can I ELABORATE? CAN I ELABORATE???
Sure. I can elaborate, but I'm not sure I'll make a lot of sense. I've been mulling this over but I can't say I've got it all figured out.
Basically, the "standard" approach to beekeeping here in Maine (and many other places) seems to be to order queens for May delivery and make splits after your colonies have built up sufficiently. This is usually in late May but might be as late as early June which is our traditional swarm season. If you're lucky you might have some colonies built up sufficiently to split in early May, but that is way too early to think about raising any queens- the weather usually sucks, as it's sucking now (5 days into 7+ days of cold rain) and there aren't any drones around.
This approach makes increase to replace your winter losses and short circuits the swarm impulse but you're then heading into the main flow which starts around mid to late June with splits that are still building up, drawing comb and/or foundation, and raising bees. Personally I'd rather hit the main flow with full blown hives just busting out with bees and piled high with supers. It means practicing real swarm management but hey, that's beekeeping. Creative alternatives like cutdown splits might take care of swarming and serve to get you honey and make increase at the same time, but that depends on everything happening just right- the right colony at the right time.
I'm really anxious to get away from the "buy queens in the spring, split like crazy, and make a little honey" approach to northern beekeeping in favor of the "build up your hives in the spring, make lots of honey during the main flow, then split to make increase" approach.
There would appear to be a lot of benefits to doing it this way, but it means learning how to ovewinter nucs. It means rearing queens in the summer when the weather is better and there are plenty of drones around and your hives are booming.
There are some challenges of course and I can only assume there are more than I've envisioned but one would be getting your splits built up sufficiently to be ready for the fall flow. You'll have large populations of old worn out bees and you'll need to make sure that they raise a good supply of young well nourished overwintering bees. This probably means stimulative feeding during the late summer dearth. Then you'll need to keep the splits from swarming on goldenrod and aster while they build up sufficiently to head into winter.
I'm thinking, if I can bring a bunch of 4 or 5 frame nucs through to spring with young healthy queens on board, I'll be all set and my big concern is going to be preventing swarming and deciding what to do with all the honey I make
Anyways- that's the general picture I'm coming up with. With only one year of beekeeping behind me and hopefully many more ahead of me, I've got time to refine it. A number of people are talking about late summer splits and overwintering nucs. If I'm crazy, then I'm not alone