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Here is Where I'm At - How Do You Suggest I Move Forward?

22K views 69 replies 22 participants last post by  squarepeg 
#1 ·
I have been talking with people on the "Brother Adam" thread, and I realized it had wandered too far from the hypothetical, to my specific interests. So I thought I'd begin anew here.

I have 13 colonies of bees. I would like to be treatment free, but fully understand that goal to be a difficult challenge and I am certainly aware of the great controversy that surrounds how to get there.

I would like to maintain a sustainable population of bees; raise my own queens and not have to buy new bees every year. In another thread on a similar subject a while back, Mike Palmer suggested that one would really need around 100 colonies to be sustainable, saying that you'd need those numbers to select from and to handle the ups and downs without collapsing, and to be able to maintain your genetic program (he did not use these words - I'm summarizing my understanding of his post).

Anyway, I have 100 colonies as my goal. I am planning to a lot of nucs; probably 3/4 of my total in the future.
Right now, I have:

• 4 Queens from three different local beekeepers - all from within 1 hour of my home. Each has been raising queens here for at least a decade.
• 3 Queens from walk away splits from those queens
• 5 Buckfast Queens from Bill Ferguson in Ontario
• 1 Queen which I got with a swarm in early June. I'm assuming by the timing that this queen has overwintered at least once here.

Right now, 6 of my colonies are overwintering nucs.

There are several beekeepers in within a few miles of me, but I do not believe any of them has more than a couple of hives. Many of them would have queens from the same local beekeepers as the ones I have came from. The rest would be some of the annual import from Hawaii. Some of those come from Kona, and I think they brought some in from Big Island as well.

How would you recommend that I proceed in reaching my goals? Should I attempt to bring in a particular stock? Should I 'deepen the pool' and add the bees of other breeders? Or should I just work with what I have?

What are some of your thoughts?

Adam
 
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#44 · (Edited)
You are now, where I was last year. Here is a short version of what I did and how I ended up. ( Short version I say, because if I talk about all the details, this post will end up the size of a book)

As a second year beekeeper, My intent for 2012 was to learn to raise queens. Having an interest in Genetics and being a livestock breeder for many years, this was a natural choice for me with the experience I've obtained from 30+ years of small home farming. I planned to have a fair sized hobby apiary and needed to generate at least enough income to pay for it. (I call it a hobby apiary because I am doing it all myself with out employees)

In my short season Northern area, I can't have nucs ready for sale early enough for most folks. I absolutely don't want to try to compete and deal with honey production. I wanted to Increase my hive numbers as much as possible to the point I would be self sufficient, have lots of resources available to manage hives and NEVER have to buy Bees again. Not so much because of the cost, because I did not like getting someone else's sloppy seconds. (I'll skip the details)

Raising queens was where my interests lie and also was the only real reliable way for me to make any money with the bees.

Starting out with only 7 overwintered hives, I bought into my plans, purchasing 18 nucs and 25 packages. This amounted to about $3100. More than I was planning, but had the opportunity to pick up some of the packages at the suppliers cost.

Some Packages were installed onto mini frames which would be used in the mating nucs. (Some mating nucs were also divided deeps.) The lack of drawn frames was the biggest thing holding me back from starting my queen rearing earlier this spring.

I started off both grafting and using the Mann Lake graftless system, having never grafted a queen before or having any lessons or mentor.

Only reading beesource for my information, I was successful right from the start. I am fortunate to understand Agriculture pretty well and I retain a lot from research.

I stocked the mating nucs with the now drawn frames rich with brood and stores, harvested my first ripe queens cells and got the ball rolling.
I removed the queens from the purchased nucs and packages and sold them,( Although I culled several of them due to poor performance or nasty trates) replacing them with my first batch of locally mated queens grafted from my best over wintered stock.
Second, third and fourth batchs of queens were sold, with the exception of the most prolific ones. I got the pick of the litter so to speak...One of the big + of queen rearing.

Prolific young queens were left in mating nucs and given room to grow. By late summer, my mating nucs were ether keepers not to be disturbed or had dwindled from taking out queens before allowing them to build up. This is a management error I will rectify this next season. I could have raise one more batch of queens, but I did not want to disturb established and flourishing hives that late in the summer to restock the mating nucs. I had people calling as late as Mid September desperate for queens.

I made enough money to pay for all my bees and some sugar.. So when most of my potentially 'perishable' costs were made up, I had reached a milestone I set for myself for this year. Don't lose any money!
At my height of the summer I had 120 hives, nucs and mating nucs.

I ended up this fall (after selling a few nucs and combining mating nucs) with about 85 strong colonies, about half in double nucs. I had people beating down my door all summer and fall for local queens. I could have raised twice as many and sold them all without shipping or advertising.

I spent a small fortune on woodenware parts and worked like a mad woman to assemble them. I had no idea I would have this many bees and although I made hives last winter, It was not near enough. I was assembling when I should have been managing the hives and that made for a summer of very long hours with all my other home and farm duties. I look forward to 2013 now that I have my hives and nucs made up, hundreds of new deep frames drawn and filled. No treatments except Hop guard. Nice clean new comb. A beautiful thing:) All on black Rite cell-small worker sized cells.

I tried to bring in some interesting genetics from a well known queen breeder, but that did not work out. (I will also not comment on that very unfortunate experience) That was my only financial loss.

My biggest problem? My bees did too well and I was too busy. Bummer, huh?

I'm going into winter with exciting genetics and lots of Daughter queens to play with next year.

My increase in hives and ability to continue financially is a direct result of queen rearing.

I estimate it will take me two-three years to make enough to cover all my woodenware, tools and hard costs resulting in about 100 hives and 100 mating nucs. After that time, well I might just be able to hold onto some of those $$. Wouldn't that be nice:)

My education was pretty intense having this many hives this fast. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone but if you are a hard worker and have confidence in your ability it is certainly possible. I'm happy with the results of my 2012 season.

I'd like to get an Insemination set up eventually, but I'll have to be generating a good income before I buy into that.

I have one quick example: I also raise vegetable seedlings. One year I grew about 30 different types of cherry tomatoes, all in hanging baskets in a row around my greenhouse. My customers would walk around to each type and enjoy a side by side taste test. It was amazing the difference you could detect between each tomato. I did it because people constantly wanted tomato varieties that were familier to them, but were not the best for flavor. They actually spit out the sweet 100's compared to the grape tomato types.

This is the experience I got with my bees this year. I had several different types with different traits. Side by side the difference was amazing and easy to choose the superior genetics.






Funny, I started beekeeping because I like woodworking. Now I'm just goin' with the flo





I almost hate to write anything at all. I imagine I'll read this post next year and cringe at my ignorance. LOL, I hope not.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Miller-Compound-HoneyBees-and-Agriculture/256954971040510
 
#46 ·
Lauri,

Thank you for sharing your experience. One question: If you sold enough to cover the cost of your bees and sugar, then you sold over 120(ish) queens. How did you connect to a market to sell all of those queens as only a second year beekeeper? How did you get the customers? Were most purchased by a few customers? Or did you have many customers buying small numbers?

Adam
 
#48 ·
I am a horticulturist, and was attempting to develop a business, propagating and selling plants. Beekeeping had been a minor hobby since before I was ten years old (I'm now 56). I hadn't planned to become a producer/supplier of queens and nucs. I did plan to expand my apiary from less than six colonies to at least a dozen. Once I reached a dozen hives (they had all been grown from an initial single cut-out). At this point their undesirable traits developed into more than just an occasional annoyance. I had already attempted requeening these hives, but the traditional methods, just didn't work. I investigated the best possible way to get queen acceptance, so built my first ever nucs. I obtained Cordovan Italian queens (to help identify the success of my efforts). In purchasing these few queens, I realized the only way I could afford to requeen all my hives, was to raise additional queens, for myself. So I taught myself to raise queens. Other beekeepers realized that I was raising queens -- now I can't raise enough queens, fast enough, to meet even a small fraction of the demand.

We (my wife and I), are letting the business grow itself, only investing some of the profit back into the business to expand as much as we are comfortable with. Anticipating that there will come a point where we may need employees to expand further.
 
#50 ·
Mike, don't forget the "F" word. This year I doubled my number of nucs from 9 to 18. I sold 44 frames of bees to my former package supplier. I sold 2 of my nucs to people who approached me about them from my online prescence. I made 1900 pounds of honey from the 18 production colonies I ran - these colonies were kept at strength by taking brood from my nucs.

I am a beek of only 3 years experience with one bee yard. Additionally, I started the year with no stores of drawn brood comb, and half of my medium honey supers were filled with undrawn comb. They are all drawn now.
This was not all plain sailing, probably because of my inexperience and the lack of drawn comb I lost some swarms. Probably more than 6, and catching swarms that issued from my hives and nucs ate into my time and enthusiasm. It was frustrating to come home from work, want to chill out, and instead have to start shaking bees off trees. I underestimated how productive they can be. Secondly, 1900 pounds of honey is more than I needed to make; I would have been better off selling bees. If I had not sold the 44 frames of brood, and instead expanded them into other colonies I cannot imagine how many colonies I would own now.

A few thoughts for the OP. I attribute a large part of my success this year to luck and weather - I happen to live in a great forage area, scruffy woods, marginal land, and some crops. I have not treated for mites, and saw some DFV at the end of the season in my production colonies, and some of my nucs. As of today I have 18 2 storey nucs and 12 hives in 10 frame equipment enrolled in OD Frank overwintering challenge.

Beyond those hives are three more not in OD's challenge. The first is a light colony in a double deep that crashed I shook out for the frames it had died with a cluster the size of an egg, the other two were in a double deep and double and a medium respectively. These were also "mitey" and I planned to shake them out for the frames, but when I came to them I had a sudden change of heart, because the bees were in a reduced cluster size the size of an orange and a grapefruit. I thought listen to all you have been assimalating all year. What I have learned from MP, whether he has said it directly or I am just extrapolating it I'm not sure, is that bees need to be in a cluster that is proportionate to the size of the cavity they are in. So instead of shaking them out on the frozen ground (and prying their cold dead fingers off the frames) I put the 2 or 3 frames they were clustering over into 5 frame nucs, and added a frame of honey to each. I am going to watch them over the winter and see what they do, they are light on stores so they may get a mountaincamp sugar boost.

All of the anecdotal evidence seems to be pointing the same way: Earlier in this thread Ian said that the Saskatraz bees want to live in smaller colonies and swarm often to survive the mites; MP says he doesn't need to treat his nucs; Mel Disselkoen says that you can outbreed the mite and not treat, and most critically he says "The art of beekeeping does not require full-strength hives at all times of the year, only during your surplus honey flows"; Seeley and others show that bees prefer a cavity of about the size of 10 deep frames when given a choice.

So for a miticide free regimen this is my plan:
1) Overwinter in 2 story 5 frame nucs.
2) Bond test the production colonies. Those that make it can be used to make some queens, in the meantime until the big freeze I consider them as caretakers of comb to use on next years splits. There is no need to protect them from wax moths as the bees do that for me.
3) Expand the nucs into 10 frame equipment for honey production when the time is right.
4) Use overwintered queens in my operation.
5) Mate queen cells in nucs and grow them on without interrupting them.
6) Rinse and repeat.

Back to the "F" word. The nucs are incredible fun. It is not hard to set them up, and I think that the bees themselves are telling us they are the way to go. All we have to do is listen and adapt.
 
#51 · (Edited)
QUOTE=Adam Foster Collins;871611]Lauri,

Thank you for sharing your experience. One question: If you sold enough to cover the cost of your bees and sugar, then you sold over 120(ish) queens. How did you connect to a market to sell all of those queens as only a second year beekeeper? How did you get the customers? Were most purchased by a few customers? Or did you have many customers buying small numbers?

.
Adam[/QUOTE]

Most of my customer bought in small numbers. I advertised on Craigs list a bit, but most of my customers got my name and phone # from my local bee and woodenware supplier, who is well established in this area, but does not raise or supply queens. He gave my name out to a ton of people. Once the clubs came out here and saw what I had going on, they also put my name and contact info on their web sites. Word just spread by itself from there. Everyone's story was Quite interesting.
I lost count of the queens after while, but raised about 165. I kept half of those but I sold the purchased package queens too. I sold a hand full of nucs and a few hive parts. I had hoped to sell more woodenware, but as soon as I made them, I was filling them with bees. I am trying to have some parts in stock for resale this year, but don't want to spend too much money on inventory just yet. Still kind of feeling the waters so to speak. My bee supplier is the biggest woodenware supplier in my area, he is close to 90. I believe and one day will retire. I would like to be established well enough by that time to take over his clientele.

My sales were actually quite minimal, when you consider the potential once I am better established. My reward for all my work this year is the resulting increases in my apiary size and improved stock.(Not to mention everthing I learned)

A problem I have now is all these people want me to teach them or come to their clubs to speak. I absolutly do not want to do that, but they are insistant. I hate it when someone does something for a month or two, then thinks they are an expert. I have achived a lot and am pretty happy with how things went, but I know there are many details I don't know yet. All I can do is talk about what I did to get this far...read beesource, find some money to invest and work long hours. I'm busy and a bit on the reclusive side and talking to people for more than 10 minutes is not my favorite thing. I'll just have to figure out where I fit in to that whole aspect. One of my problems is I tend to give too much information too fast and people get the deer in the headlights look in a hurry.

Most of my customers came out more than once and bought more queens than they planned. It's rare to hear a grown man giggle, but I heard that over and over when I'd take out the frame with the big fat queen and show her and her pattern of brood. LOL.

They liked not having to pay shipping for a small order and being able to see the queen in her mating nuc..seeing her laying pattern,etc. I never banked my queens and they were fresh from their nucs to their new hives. I charged $20.00- $25.00 for the sale of my purchased queens out of the nucs and packages after they had built up enough to harvest the drawn frames, $30.00 for my locally bred queens and $40.00 for those that were marked 'Keepers'. I never had anyone squeek at my prices. They were attracted to my Glenn Daughters especially, but I kept most of those daughters myself for my VSH stock. (Plus I had to cull a fair percentage of those Glenns do to poor performance. They had a wide range of reliability)

I had another breeder queen who's daughters far out performed the first generation of the Glenns and I grafted mostly from her this year.
That's why I wish I had insemination equipment. Crossing the most prolific daughters from these two lines in a controlled setting could be amazing.

Also I would assume being a woman beekeeper makes me stand out somewhat. Many people have come out here, looked around at what I have going on with the bees, horses, garden etc. and tell me, "You're livin' my dream"
It makes them want to come back and bring their friends.
 
#54 ·
Also I would assume being a woman beekeeper makes me stand out somewhat...
I am actually noticing that more and more women seem to be taking up beekeeping. I've been 'into' bees my whole life, and believe me, it wasn't something that generally "got ya dates" for most of that time.

But now it seems that if the subject gets mentioned at a gathering or something, it seems that more women are interested in it than the men are. I'm not sure if it's the connection to nature, a healthy environment, or what, but there seems to have been a marked shift in the bee demographic.

Of course, that's a personal observation, and maybe there are statistics which show a different picture. But that's the view from my house.

Adam
 
#52 ·
>OD Frank overwintering challenge. Beyond those hives are three more not in OD Frank overwintering challenge. Beyond those hives are three more not in OD's challenge

LET'S CLEAR SOMETHING UP HERE !!!!!!

IT IS NOT MY CHALLENGE. DUFFUS BRAIN CHARLIE B SET OUT THE CHALLENGE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION AND JUST NAMED IT AFTER ME!!!!
FUNNY GUY, CHARLIE B !!!!

I don't give a bee's poop how many of your hives died this winter, how many queens you raised, or how many bait swarms you catch. I just want to sit all winter in my shop next to my wood stove fueled with hive manufacture scraps holding my WTK brad hammer in my old wrinkled hands nailing together and wiring frames while the delicious scent of wafting pine and redwood smoke swirl around my bald old head. I will also set aside some time to mail out some BeeBee Tree whips and eat a few scones topped with eucalyptus honey and heated atop my woodstove.
 
#56 · (Edited)
It could have something to do with the baby boomer generation being broke, or at least uncertain of our economy. Priorities and spending habits for many have changed.

99 % of my customers are still men. I only had two women all summer. Most women I talk to shudder at the thought of bugs and they put bees in that catagory. My mother in law won't even come out to our house anymore since I have bees.

Half my vegetable seedling sales are to men too. If I had flowers, I'd get more women I think. Women raised in the country are generally willing to try things like hunting, fishing and beekeeping, etc. Things most city raised women would never consider doing. Generally speaking of course, but that's been my experience.
I guess what I am trying to say is they have to be introduced to it. Take for instance the movie, the Hunger Games. Archery has been dominated by men for years. Now there is a flood of young women learning to shoot because of that movie.

Let's get Angelena Jolie into beekeeping. Then see how many woman tend bees:)
 
#58 ·
odfrank;871682 I just want to sit all winter in my shop next to my wood stove fueled with hive manufacture scraps holding my WTK brad hammer in my old wrinkled hands nailing together and wiring frames while the delicious scent of wafting pine and redwood smoke swirl around my bald old head. I will also set aside some time to mail out some BeeBee Tree whips and eat a few scones topped with eucalyptus honey and heated atop my woodstove.[/QUOTE said:
Ah winter. If eating scones with eucalyptus honey doesn't crack a smile on that "bald old head", I guess nothin' will.
 
#59 ·
OdFrank, are you throwing out another challenge?
How about warm, man sized chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven?

(Nice thing about winter..I don't have my veil on and can actually eat something.)

 
#60 ·
Lauri, we've seen most of your queen set up in bits and pieces in various threads, I would welcome a thread dedicated to how you solved each of the hurdles you encountered as you gathered everything to graft, grow, incubate and incarcerate the virgin queens until you put them in a NUC. I'm particularly in the dark about a source for those finishing frames and special cages you use. TIA :)

Thanks for starting this thread Adam :)
 
#61 ·
This thread has helped me decide what direction to go.

I've been back in bees one year, and have been considering the various ways to manage them. I just hit a home run on lumber. I'm picking up 2,000 2' lengths of 1x6 this weekend for a very good price. I plan to make 5 frame deeps out of all of it. We all bring our talents to the table. What I lack in beek skills can be compensated for by being a carpenter.

I've also found most beeks selling bees around here to be totally lacking in customer skills. Probably one reason Lauri had such good luck selling queens. (Congrats Lauri!) Who wants to do business with a gruff old beek when they can talk to a nice person interested in cheerfully answering questions? The fact is, I am a gruff old beek, but I can still conduct business cheerfully and with sincere interest in my customer's welfare.

I've found setting up and managing nucs fairly easy like MP says.
Raising queens is another story. I'm not sure my eyesight will allow that on any large scale. I see eggs and larva easy enough, but scanning for the queen has become quite a chore with age, just like scanning shelves for a particular part at the hardware store has become much more time consuming.
I'm using Mel's notching technique to make QC's and have found that very easy as well for use in nucs, but finding that queen again to cage her even in a nuc is a challenge.

So my direction will probably be focused on nucs and honey until someone invents a queen detector.
 
#64 ·
...I've also found most beeks selling bees around here to be totally lacking in customer skills....Who wants to do business with a gruff old beek when they can talk to a nice person interested in cheerfully answering questions? The fact is, I am a gruff old beek, but I can still conduct business cheerfully and with sincere interest in my customer's welfare...
I have found this to be absolutely true in my experience as well, and part of what has moved me to go this route.

I have had some experience myself and heard complaints from others about bee-sellers who seem to have no inter-personal skills whatsoever. No one likes handing over money to a person that makes them feel awkward or uncomfortable. By this a mean a person who isn't ready when a customer arrives at the time they agreed on - but makes no apologies, or a person who seems to be trying to push a customer to handle bees without protection because he can see they're nervous. Or a person who speaks to a new beekeeper as if they're an idiot, or a person who gets all bent out of shape if you say you're using a top bar hive...

Customer service goes a long way, and a lack of customer service goes a long way to sending people down the road. To me, it looks like a business opportunity.

Great information, Lauri. Interesting approach in scraping the comb off the plastic foundation for grafting.

Adam
 
#62 · (Edited)
Don, I hatch my queen cells out in a cheap chicken incubator. As they hatch I let them walk around on my hand and then mark them. Put them back into the hair roller cage in the incubator and when I have a few ready, go out and direct release them into the mating nucs. Looking for queens is the biggest time waster for me. I have a great return on them and feel marking them as virgins makes no difference on acceptance, return or longevity in the hive. Makes them super easy to find. And maybe more important, super easy NOT to Miss, when transferring frames. Who hasn't accidentally transferred a queen to another hive? Grrrr.

I know some people are apposed to marking at all. In that case, I don't know what to suggest. Darn color this year will be red though. I'm not sure how that color will stand out.



Even this incubator photo need some updating and changes. I needed something to hold the hair roller cages securely and used this soft oassis foam. As soon as the queens hatch, they will crawl down to the bottom of the cage, then up into the old cell looking for a meal. They will die in there and you need to remove the cell soon asap. Trouble with this set up is it is easy to miss the queens on the bottom of the roller cage since it is covered and will miss your chance to remove the cell before they get into it.

Those queen cells in the incubator were a dinky bunch, but the JZBZ cells were packed full of royal jelley-so I hatched them out. It ended up being a great batch of queens. How can a large queen come out of a dinky cell? I almost chucked the whole bunch.



Below: Newly hatched and marked.


Here is the virgin on a direct release, I always place them on a good feed frame. Upon releasing they will always find a good cell and dive into it and drink, drink, drink. It's cute to see the young bees run up and feed her too. I have never had a single rejection, as long as they are released within a few hours of hatching. If they hatch overnight, it is still Ok, but I do detect the acceptance is not quite as easy.


I started out by placing ripe cells in the mating nucs, but liked hatching them out much better. No nucs with unhatched cells to remain queenless for too long and thus non productive, no disturbing the mating nuc to check for a hatch, queens are evaluated and marked already.
(Note: Placing cells works great and is easy to do. I'm not saying it is a bad way, but it is no faster in the long run and a little less productive. I had one laying worker hive I just couldn't fix with a mated queen or virgin. Placing a cell into that was the only way to remove the old layer and get that nuc back on track-but this is another thread)

Here is a video of placing a virgin queen in a mating nuc. This queen was a little older (Over night hatch) and you can see she is very submissive. The receiving bees almost get there hackles up, but do accept her. Ususlly when I release a newly hatched virgin, most of the bees totally ignore her. Only a few young bees will come up and groom her and feed her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhUrIAcA3eQ

This video was taken early on in the summer when I wa still wearing those nasty leather gloves. I changed to surgical gloves and they work great. Basically the bees can still sting me almost as well as gloveless, but I can't feel them crawling all over my hands which creeped me out a bit. A good transition to going gloveless.
For my bigger jobs I use thin rubber kitchen gloves that are tight and much better fitting. I get stung on the hands less with those than my old leather gloves.


Lee, writing that will take some time. I'll work on it and post some more details ASAP. There is a lot of things I'd like to talk about, like checking the queens cells and finding them all beautifully capped, then a few days later finding them all covered with comb. I tried everything Beesource folks said, but ended up grafting directly into the cell cups meant for the Mann Lake graftless system, then as soon as they were capped, covering them with the hair roller cage. I also tried taking out the capped cells and finishing them in the incubator. I had a good hatch rate doing that, but it was slightly lower that letting them ripen in a hive.

I used a tiny paint brush for grafting. I found the Chinese tool was easy to pick up the larva, but I had a hard time getting off the tool. I ended up taking my paint brush and swizzle it around into an older larva's royal jelly, brush it onto the cell cup to prime it so to speak. I just moistened the cup so when I placed the larva, it had some moisture adhesion and came off the brush very clean and easily, without trauma. I would roll my brush clockwise under the larva, and then counter clockwise to get her off.
This photo doesn't show anything really, just how easy it is to graft from black rite cell and new soft comb.


I just took a knife and gently scraped back the comb. The rite cell cells are deep enough to hold the larva and you'll never touch them.
 
#67 · (Edited)
Yes. Little Giant with circulation fan. I did the queen cells exactly the same as hatching eggs. Same humidity level, just little lower temp. My thermometer sensor was on the bottom of the tray-so I set the temp at 92 degrees, figuring the temp at the top was about 4-6 degrees warmer. That heating cable gets HOT.
My gestation length was just right, but interestingly I always had one queen hatch out 12-18 hours early. Most of the batch would hatch out the next day and I'd generally get one or two to hatch 12 -18 hours later. I though it was from my grafting older or younger larva, but I still got that with my graftless grid when I had the egg hatching time down to a few hours. A good lesson if you're finishing IN a hive. Watch out for those early birds.
You'd wonder if the last few to hatch were from the youngest larva and perhaps be better quality from being treated like a queen earlier with royal jelly. I kept track for a while, but found no difference in productivity between the earlier and later hatching times.
The little giant absolutly works, but is a little flimsy. I'd like a better quality incubator, but man! Are they spendy!
 
#68 ·
Lauri, it's amazing what you've done for a first year queen breeder! Thanks for sharing all that info.
I normally don't use painted queens, but not for the typical reasons; I'm pretty colorblind, and unless the dots are white or yellow, they are of no value to me. Think anyone would mind if my queens were yellow every year? ;-)

"Customer service goes a long way, and a lack of customer service goes a long way to sending people down the road. To me, it looks like a business opportunity."

Amen to that Adam. I've been advertising spring singles on Craigslist that I'm bringing up from Florida in April. Been doing a lot of talking and email answering from novices, and sometimes it does get tiring, but I figure if I'm not doing anything else I might as well be trying to make a sale.

Picked up my first load of that lumber today. There will be more than I thought, at least 2300 2' 1x6 and 350 10' 2x4's.. I got a great deal on about 100 8'x10' specialty pallets made from real 1x6 and real 2x4's. Some dis-assembly required. There are 8 stacks of these. My son and I spent the day going through 2 stacks. I'm so sore I can barely move. The things we do to be beekeepers!
 
#69 · (Edited)
Thanks Don. It has luckily worked out well.
I don't mind the novices at all. But what I hate is people calling me up and saying 'I THINK my hive is queenless." That makes me shudder. I tell them to be sure before they spend their money, they really need a queen. I tell them about all the situations the hive may appear queenless, make sure there is not a virgin in there or one out on a mating flight during the day.... and the deer in the headlights look starts to show, even over the phone.

I am a lumber hoarder. Don't tell me about any good deals. I have some 3" thick select deck left over from a job site stored up in my loft. It's beautiful..if I can think of something to make out of it. I'm thinking a door with a radius top for my canning room..build it like an old time Castle door with all the heavy steel hardware and large Clavos nails.
Here is a door my husband built me recently for my barn work shop stall. We are still looking for just the right hardware to install it. A friend of ours got some big hindges of old railroad cars for his barn doors, but they are hard to find.









My woodworking skills are usually limited to smaller projects. It was interesting to watch him build this door. It was made out of regular 1 1/2" car decking.
 
#70 ·
lauri, i really want to complement you for thinking outside the (bee)box.

you deserve a lot of credit, and i sense that you are happy with your innovating.

that's my favorite reward from beekeeping.

if you take a round peg, and look at it from the side, it always looks the same, no matter what angle you look at it from.

a square peg on the other hand, gives you different views, depending on the angle you are looking from.
 
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