Soar, can't give you any advice since my experience and timing is all about the mid-Atlantic, but did want to say "Good job"!
Every nuc you make now that gets to 8 frames by the end of Jan is worth $160-180 in pollination fees right?
JW, thank you for your kind words!
Regarding rental prices, last year, the going rate for many of us was $200 per 7 frame colony. If we went with a contractor, we were paid $180 per 7 frame colony. I recently read a scientific data chart that clearly depicts the rate of growth of almond orchards growing significantly faster than the growth of the USA honeybee population. This can only equate to one result: higher rental fees because the demand will continue to outpace the supply.
I see the eucalyptus budding up down here. You should be good unless there is a hellish winter. Don't get greedy. Make your divides strong enough to build up. Three frames of brood and two of honey. Keep them dry and feed as needed. Put an apivar strip in each.
Hi Frank! Thanks for the good advice. We been using that Oxivap 110 with amazing results. As a triple safety, we hope to install Apivar toward the end of the month. Presently, haven't found even one live mite. When done correctly [good vaporizer, 10 minutes sealed, and proper dosages], that OA vaporization was worked wonders for us here.
I think you have the red gum in your vicinity? It blooms earlier than the ********. Here, we have the ********. Last year it bloomed from Oct-June.
on the conservative side your where you want to be dont screw it up.
im feeling the change of season. i wouldnt bet the farm at this time.
we dont make much advance without some risk. id make up nucs that dont compromise
the established colonies. make splits from surplus.
remember that splits are feeders for established colonies and its robbing season.
Good advice stangardener! That's the plan.
Our experiance tells us late splits are A poor investment. It is important bees heading into winter cluster have a solid population with a well well balanced caste. This normally takes around 2 brood cycles after the time of a split. Having said that, large numbers of drones are often the precursor to swarms in crowded hives. Depending on what strain of bees you have you may still have have 2 brood cycles left before the end of the season. Italians here in the Finger Lakes often lay into November, Carniolans will shut down the 2nd week of October so not a good bet this late. If your hives have been treated for mites at least a month prior to doing splits, you have a large population and you have the experiance and time to manage them splits are still possible. Do you have quick access to young laying queens and can you get the splits done in the next few days? If not, better to winter strong hives and make splits next spring. Good winter patties and a late winter;early spring season brood builder patties on strong hives will give you some nice monsters in the spring And you can make increase at a time when nature supports that effort. We make our splits in the spring by making 6 nucs from a strong hive Andy building them up during good bloom and warm weather at our South Carolina winter yards. In the mean time I would suggest to keep an eye on the hives with large drone populations and be ready to do some swarm intervention if necessary.
Joel, last year when we attempted small two frame nucs in Sept. we experienced a 90% failure rate. Our March nucs were 100% success rate. So for us, following the honeybees natural rhythms appears to be most successful. But this year is much different than last year. This year, we still have a pollen and nectar flow [last year nada], we had massive mite infestations last year [many virgin queens had mites attached to them] this year, no mites, and last year major problem with robbing. This year, minimal robbing. So huge differences for us from last year to this year.
We have a many, many different varieties of honeybees. We only purchased one colony and I think that one died. All our colonies are the results of capturing swarms and then splitting and lots of queen cell grafting. So we have bees that are totally black [look and act like carniolians], we have some colonies where the bees are huge, gentle, and nearly totally bright yellow [this is the first year I have ever seen them like this, and I will graft some queen cells this week from that queen], and we have other bees that look/perform like Russians and some that look/perform like Italians. We worked hard this year in our attempt to radically change most of our colonies. We attempted this by grafting from only one queen from March-June and this queen and her bees far outperformed any colony we have ever had [she was laying massive eggs in December and January, her colony was much stronger than any we have ever seen, super, super gentle, etc.] Her qualities and her daughter's and grand daughter's qualities are absolutely amazing.
Last year in splitter my around this time and all survived winter w/o any issue. Double decker should be fine with 5 or 6 nucs. If you have laying queen soon then it should build up fast. I am in the valley and the colony still bring in pollen all the way to November. The full size colony still rearing brood throughout the winter.
This year there are plenty of nectar. Just check my hive couple days ago and each colony managed to filled up with a 1.5 super after an extraction about 1 month ago. Previously there are extra nectar/sugar from mid summer to fall but only a third of this year
Tom, thanks for the reply. Yes, it has truly been a wonderful year for beekeepers in Sacramento Valley!
how about you? 
