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So I live in a smallish house and have a largish woodshop on the property. It actually looks like a home with a garage, but it isn't. Initially I have been relegated to a small corner of the backyard just beyond the garden. And initially I have been limited to exactly 1 colony/hive. And of course, when spring comes, unless everything goes exactly perfectly any loss is 100% loss with no resources to use to help recover. So essentially, this particular style of beekeeping on such a small scale, either requires very disciplined, and intensive maintenance to avoid buying bees every year. If I didn't have to feed them, or medicate them, or put any other money into them, I can't harvest enough honey to break even on recovering the cost of the price of a Nuc. However, as it is, there are other costs as listed.
Backyard, circle around current hive location.
View from hive location behind garden shed.
Okay, so I have to following options available to me at present since I have no active colony.
1. Buy nucs, packages, queens (expensive at best)
2. Try to catch swarms (unreliable might not be successful)
If I have an active colony, I assume I have some ability to do splits, false swarms, forced swarms, and/or swarm mitigation
It would appear to me that if I don't take a colony, and somehow make it into multiple colonies going into the winter, I am more likely than not going to come out of the winter with no colonies. Much of the splitting and queen rearing strategies I see come from those with established bee yards, with history and existing equipment in specific states. There seems to be no limit to frames of clean already drawn comb, frames of brood in many stated day 0 through capped brood. And plenty of extra mated queens, employees, and unlimited time as in many cases it is their whole day-job.
Those are not to complain, but merely to show the techniques used in such scenarios may or may not scale down to those who are doing small scale home beekeeping.
There are plenty of strategies for getting a nuc through spring and into summer in hopes of winter. The last nuc I ever bought here is what I was told to do.
1. Transfer them to your hive.
2. Get a 5 gallon pale and 25lb bag of sugar and mix it with 3 gallons of water.
3. Feed, feed, feed, feed...
4. When the bees are covering all the frames in your box, add another box.
5. If they cover all of those frames, then put on supers.
In addition to all that, I treated with OA 1x a week for 4 weeks in the spring, then MAQs once in the fall and left it on until the bees cleaned out the trash. No sugar rolls or alcohol rolls. Just treat them period.
This is not a workable strategy,
My very first was a more fly by the seat of my pants and try to apply what the bee school taught and what I could read. I won a nuc as a door prize from the bee school.
1, Transfer them into the hive.
2. When you open the box and they are pouring out when they are opened, add a new box. When they pour out of the second one add supers.
3. Made jar feeders, and when it got hot and very dry and they didn't seem to be bringing in anything, they were fed sugar water "Until they didn't want anymore"
4. I used no OA, and no FA and didn't really do anything for the SHB
When spring came, I had a tiny baseball sized cluster, Then we had a weird late spring few freeze days and then they got robbed out.
And there a couple years in-between where a little more this or a little less of that. But in the end, it seems like had I had multple colonies there were times that they could have either been combined, or a frame of one thing or the other from one could have been used to boost the other. In addition, Especially in the beginning, I would have done well to have some "drawn comb" rather than frames with just froundation or nothing at all. But again, first year, all one has is the nuc and what came in it, and brand new gear possibly with wax foundation.
So, I have a few goals, and would like to come up with strategies to move forward.
1. I don't want to buy bees every year.
2. I would prefer not have to treat with OA FA or prophylactic pharmaceuticals
3. I would prefer not to feed sugar water as a matter of course
4. I must keep the size of the outdoor area being used to a "minimum." So while a shotgun approach might work, don't have unlimited space, and I do have next door neighbors, with little kids.
Additional concerns,
a. I must work a day job
b. I have no dependable help or employees so must do it as 1 person
So for #1 I need to optimize my ability to catch swarms. Both if they happen from my own colonies, or from external ones to populate initial colonies. It also requires that I cam split and make multiple colonies each spring/summer to increase my ability to come out of the winter with any colonies.
I am not sure I understand all the aspects of #2 but it appears that if I can keep a strong colony, in right sized space I don't think I have as much problem. And if I am propagating enough newer colonies, I will be having lots of brood breaks, and perhaps the bees that better handle such problems will be the surviving colonies. But I am willing to do some a/b testing if I can have multiple colonies at a time as well. But more research needs to be done on this.
For #3, I am not sure that I am in an environment where there aren't enough resources for foraging bees to feed a hive and even prep it for winter. Feeding as a matter of course just doesn't seem like the right thing to do. I understand drought years and other problems as exceptions, but they should be just that, exceptions.
Okay, so I am reading everything I can get my hands on about "treatment free" and "natural" beekeeping. I do understand that some of these things are religious level of opposition/acceptance. I am not looking to get into such wars.
Anyway, if you want to help me come up with some strategies or if you can point me to more people like Seely, Sharashkin, Bush, Barnyard Bees... no other names are coming to mind, but I know there's more. I would love to know some people (even if they are not in my same area) who are doing small scale in a small area like me.
Backyard, circle around current hive location.

View from hive location behind garden shed.

Okay, so I have to following options available to me at present since I have no active colony.
1. Buy nucs, packages, queens (expensive at best)
2. Try to catch swarms (unreliable might not be successful)
If I have an active colony, I assume I have some ability to do splits, false swarms, forced swarms, and/or swarm mitigation
It would appear to me that if I don't take a colony, and somehow make it into multiple colonies going into the winter, I am more likely than not going to come out of the winter with no colonies. Much of the splitting and queen rearing strategies I see come from those with established bee yards, with history and existing equipment in specific states. There seems to be no limit to frames of clean already drawn comb, frames of brood in many stated day 0 through capped brood. And plenty of extra mated queens, employees, and unlimited time as in many cases it is their whole day-job.
Those are not to complain, but merely to show the techniques used in such scenarios may or may not scale down to those who are doing small scale home beekeeping.
There are plenty of strategies for getting a nuc through spring and into summer in hopes of winter. The last nuc I ever bought here is what I was told to do.
1. Transfer them to your hive.
2. Get a 5 gallon pale and 25lb bag of sugar and mix it with 3 gallons of water.
3. Feed, feed, feed, feed...
4. When the bees are covering all the frames in your box, add another box.
5. If they cover all of those frames, then put on supers.
In addition to all that, I treated with OA 1x a week for 4 weeks in the spring, then MAQs once in the fall and left it on until the bees cleaned out the trash. No sugar rolls or alcohol rolls. Just treat them period.
This is not a workable strategy,
My very first was a more fly by the seat of my pants and try to apply what the bee school taught and what I could read. I won a nuc as a door prize from the bee school.
1, Transfer them into the hive.
2. When you open the box and they are pouring out when they are opened, add a new box. When they pour out of the second one add supers.
3. Made jar feeders, and when it got hot and very dry and they didn't seem to be bringing in anything, they were fed sugar water "Until they didn't want anymore"
4. I used no OA, and no FA and didn't really do anything for the SHB
When spring came, I had a tiny baseball sized cluster, Then we had a weird late spring few freeze days and then they got robbed out.
And there a couple years in-between where a little more this or a little less of that. But in the end, it seems like had I had multple colonies there were times that they could have either been combined, or a frame of one thing or the other from one could have been used to boost the other. In addition, Especially in the beginning, I would have done well to have some "drawn comb" rather than frames with just froundation or nothing at all. But again, first year, all one has is the nuc and what came in it, and brand new gear possibly with wax foundation.
So, I have a few goals, and would like to come up with strategies to move forward.
1. I don't want to buy bees every year.
2. I would prefer not have to treat with OA FA or prophylactic pharmaceuticals
3. I would prefer not to feed sugar water as a matter of course
4. I must keep the size of the outdoor area being used to a "minimum." So while a shotgun approach might work, don't have unlimited space, and I do have next door neighbors, with little kids.
Additional concerns,
a. I must work a day job
b. I have no dependable help or employees so must do it as 1 person
So for #1 I need to optimize my ability to catch swarms. Both if they happen from my own colonies, or from external ones to populate initial colonies. It also requires that I cam split and make multiple colonies each spring/summer to increase my ability to come out of the winter with any colonies.
I am not sure I understand all the aspects of #2 but it appears that if I can keep a strong colony, in right sized space I don't think I have as much problem. And if I am propagating enough newer colonies, I will be having lots of brood breaks, and perhaps the bees that better handle such problems will be the surviving colonies. But I am willing to do some a/b testing if I can have multiple colonies at a time as well. But more research needs to be done on this.
For #3, I am not sure that I am in an environment where there aren't enough resources for foraging bees to feed a hive and even prep it for winter. Feeding as a matter of course just doesn't seem like the right thing to do. I understand drought years and other problems as exceptions, but they should be just that, exceptions.
Okay, so I am reading everything I can get my hands on about "treatment free" and "natural" beekeeping. I do understand that some of these things are religious level of opposition/acceptance. I am not looking to get into such wars.
Anyway, if you want to help me come up with some strategies or if you can point me to more people like Seely, Sharashkin, Bush, Barnyard Bees... no other names are coming to mind, but I know there's more. I would love to know some people (even if they are not in my same area) who are doing small scale in a small area like me.