Production Hives

1086 Views 5 Replies 5 Participants Last post by propet12, May 2, 2019

snl

Discussion Starter · May 2, 2019

We hear beeks talk about their production and nonproductive hives. Why is not every hive a productive one? Either you're raising bees for honey or to make more bees. It seems like some beeks just can't make the leap of replacing a failing queen in favor of a productive one. Nursing that unproductive queen along just wastes time, energy and money (in the form of lost honey.)
I've been guilty of this in the past but once you finally decide enough is enough and decide you're no longer going to tolerate junk queens in any of your hives it's amazing how much more enjoyable beekeeping can be.
Your thoughts?

Save

1 - 6 of 6 Posts

JWPalmer

· #2 · May 2, 2019

Larry, when I say production hive, it is a hive that I am not continuously taking frames of brood out of for splits and queen rearing. Those would be resource hives. Instead, it is a hive that I am placing supers on and expect to get honey from. A failing hive is just that and gets requeened at the first opportunity with a queen I raised from a resource hive. It's all semantics.

Do others use a different terminology?

Save

John Davis

· #3 · May 2, 2019

Larry
In my case it is not production vs non productive. I agree that some folks nurse along a queen or hive when requeening would solve issues.
In my case it is a strong "production" hive for honey vs making more bees. Both are productive but production refers to honey.

Save

snl

Discussion Starter · #4 · May 2, 2019

JWPalmer said:
It's all semantics.

You're most likely right!

Save

d16795

· #5 · May 2, 2019

Now you've gone and muddied up my thinking! I currently have only 5 hives, and the way I WAS approaching this year was having 2 production hives(honey producers), and 3 for building starter/finishers and then split up into nucs. Obviously they are all producing something, more bees/nucs/honey. It was just a short hand way of thinking through what my plans are. 2 production and 3 resource hives. Now I have to rethink that to 5 production hives. Thanks now I'm stuck on semantics. LOL.

Save

propet12

· #6 · May 2, 2019

Production hives are those intended to produce honey - the core of a honey production business. All of the other hives support the production hives: nucs, spares, comb builders, pollen collectors, splits, queen banks, etc.

Save

1 - 6 of 6 Posts

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.

Top Contributors this Month