Sol's Nuc Project (Parker Plan, Second Year and Beyond)

[pwadstein]

This is a really good plan that i may use for myself this year.

How many hives did u strip down to make all the 28 mating nucs?
Do u think i can do this method whit my 8 hives whit 20 frames LN?
The goal for us is to have 25-30 hives in the end of the summer.

Looking forward for new post....:-)

[David LaFerney]

When I was thinking about starting to raise queens I obsessed somewhat on grafting success - or rather fear of not having any success at grafting. But now in my 3rd season of doing queen rearing it is very clear that mating nuc management is really the more challenging part of it - the part that no one talks about very much.

It's not all that hard to produce 20 good queen cells, but then you have to come up with 20 GOOD frames of brood to make the mating nucs - which can knock quite a hole in a small apiary.

So, for people who are thinking about getting started in queen rearing in their backyard apiary - consider just making a dozen or so grafts at a time at first - that can still be quite a few nice queens.

[Solomon Parker]

Yep, that's how it works. I ended up with nearly thirty cells for which I had made 30 nucs. It took seven hives having all but one frame swiped to get enough brood. It also took 30 frames at least partially filled with honey. Basically, this process has taken 10 of my eleven hives and destroyed their production capability for the year. But I did save one exceptional hive for honey production.

The whole idea was to increase as much as possible and still make honey. I'll still have to figure out some sustainable level of production of all the products.

[mrnewberry]

Sounds pretty intense! Be sure to get some pictures.

[Solomon Parker]

As always: http://parkerfarms.blogspot.com/

[Solomon Parker]

Update:

I killed my first queen, and second. After confiscating the majority of their brood, two hives recovered far slower than other ones, so I mooshed their queens and used two of the best nucs to replace the queen and reinforce the hives. I've decided to kill off the weakest queens and put mean productive queens in nucs to draw combs.

I've sold a couple nucs and a couple queens and I'm down to twenty nine hives remaining from a high of about 35 queenright, up from 11 overwintered.

More of the darker queens I raised have failed. They were also the batch raised with a queenless starter/finisher. Still liking the queenright method.

I'm still considering this a very good and successful year.

[oblib]

Thanks for the update. Funny that just today I thought " I wonder how Sol's plan is going."

[Solomon Parker]

If you'd like me to include any details I've neglected, don't hesitate to ask.

[Solomon Parker]

I have posted an update under its own thread, I maybe should have posted it here, but people sometimes get discouraged when they see multiple page threads.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...ates-Requested