Not necessarily.
Way to do it without the wheels falling off is to increase numbers in line with experience and funds to buy kit. By contrast, I recall a conversation years ago at a queen rearing workshop at a BBKA Spring Convention. The person was a financial advisor or similar (either way, stuck in a monotonous office) and since the epiphany of two hives at the bottom of her garden, had decided to throw it all up and become a beefarmer and run 60 colonies
straightaway.
Not only that, she was determined to go out and buy a new Land Rover! I was taken aback by this overwhelming zeal for bees beyond her experience (I was running half a dozen at the time without much of a clue) and often wonder what happened to her and her partner (and the expensive Land Rover).
Once you get past ten or twenty a lot of hobby habits go out of the window. For example, one of the best pieces of advice I had was from a young Czech beefarmer: manage bees by apiary, not colony. He'd grown up in a family runnng 400, so worth listening to, and he didn't ever look knackered.
Simplicity of operation is another necessity: kit must be interchangeable completely, methods to deal with swarming must minimise equipment and optimise time, and flexibility of thinking is not optional. Mistakes are valuable, because they're fuel on the fire of development.
If I keep at it, I might get there eventually.
