So,
This winter kicked my back side and humbled me in ways I don't feel like getting into in this thread. The long and short of it is I went into the winter with between 40-50 colonies and now have 8. It's painful even to type it out and see it on the screen in front of me. I've had a very disheartening and frustrating week going through dead-outs, cleaning up old comb and hive bodies, and trying to extract the full frames of honey that have been left behind. I'm at a crossroads with what to do and I'm beating my head against the wall trying to come up with the best solution. I'll walk you through my thought process and hopefully you gals and guys can chime in and give me your two cents.
With eight colonies coming out of winter I anticipate having at least 36-40 frames of brood between all 8 colonies by the first-second week in May. I'm able to purchase queens at 15$ a piece and figure I can start a colony with one frame of brood/bees and a laying queen. If I divvy up resources early on by the second week in may I could have ~25-30 colonies that are queen-right. Allow the queens to lay and hopefully by mid June those 25-30 colonies are sporting ~5-8 frames of brood. At this point I can either A) buy more queens and repeat the process until my brood boxes are full again or B) Rear my own queens and stock my equipment with my own queens that have been reared.
The problem with plan B) is the time gap from when I start rearing until the queens hatch, mate, lay, and produce the first brood cycle. Huge bummer
The problem with plan A) there isn't really a draw back to this plan simply because I already have drawn frames to support at least 100 colonies so the queens I purchase will be able to go right into laying.
Plan C which is another possibility I'm pushing around is let's say the queens I'm buying I have no anticipation of taking all the way into winter. If they go into winter great, if they don't no big deal because all I need them for is to reproduce my work force. As the queens I buy begin to lay and bring the colonies to full strength it gives me the option to harvest brood/workers and use to supplement other colonies or nucs that I'll start setting up when the resources become available to breed.
Some things to keep in mind,
1.I'm not anticipating a honey harvest this year, quite the opposite. I plan on having to feed rigorously.
2.I already have enough comb and equipment drawn to fill 125 deeps
3.I still don't know what I'm doing but am having fun making mistakes along the way.
4.I'm not buying packages or nucs, I'm going to grow what I've got to get where I can
My question boils down to: am I setting myself up for failure trying to start colonies with a laying queen and a brood comb full of nurse bees and brood or will this plan suffice?
This winter kicked my back side and humbled me in ways I don't feel like getting into in this thread. The long and short of it is I went into the winter with between 40-50 colonies and now have 8. It's painful even to type it out and see it on the screen in front of me. I've had a very disheartening and frustrating week going through dead-outs, cleaning up old comb and hive bodies, and trying to extract the full frames of honey that have been left behind. I'm at a crossroads with what to do and I'm beating my head against the wall trying to come up with the best solution. I'll walk you through my thought process and hopefully you gals and guys can chime in and give me your two cents.
With eight colonies coming out of winter I anticipate having at least 36-40 frames of brood between all 8 colonies by the first-second week in May. I'm able to purchase queens at 15$ a piece and figure I can start a colony with one frame of brood/bees and a laying queen. If I divvy up resources early on by the second week in may I could have ~25-30 colonies that are queen-right. Allow the queens to lay and hopefully by mid June those 25-30 colonies are sporting ~5-8 frames of brood. At this point I can either A) buy more queens and repeat the process until my brood boxes are full again or B) Rear my own queens and stock my equipment with my own queens that have been reared.
The problem with plan B) is the time gap from when I start rearing until the queens hatch, mate, lay, and produce the first brood cycle. Huge bummer
The problem with plan A) there isn't really a draw back to this plan simply because I already have drawn frames to support at least 100 colonies so the queens I purchase will be able to go right into laying.
Plan C which is another possibility I'm pushing around is let's say the queens I'm buying I have no anticipation of taking all the way into winter. If they go into winter great, if they don't no big deal because all I need them for is to reproduce my work force. As the queens I buy begin to lay and bring the colonies to full strength it gives me the option to harvest brood/workers and use to supplement other colonies or nucs that I'll start setting up when the resources become available to breed.
Some things to keep in mind,
1.I'm not anticipating a honey harvest this year, quite the opposite. I plan on having to feed rigorously.
2.I already have enough comb and equipment drawn to fill 125 deeps
3.I still don't know what I'm doing but am having fun making mistakes along the way.
4.I'm not buying packages or nucs, I'm going to grow what I've got to get where I can
My question boils down to: am I setting myself up for failure trying to start colonies with a laying queen and a brood comb full of nurse bees and brood or will this plan suffice?