Aggressive splitting of colonies

I have 14 colonies going into winter. All in good health, treated for varroa, lots of stores.

Come spring, I want to forfeit any honey production and focus solely on aggressive, organic growth. I am getting married and need the cash!

I had good practise of rearing queens last year.

What's my best strategy?

My original thought was to wait until the drones are flying well and take a 4 frame nuc from each colony and give them a queen cell from my best performing hive from last year. This would result in 14 nucs and 14 small colonies both with enough time to build up to a good size before selling them.

But it dawned on me that If i build up the colonies artificially earlier in the year using protein patties I may be able to take 2 x 3 frame nucs from each hive and still leave all of the spring and early summer for colonies to build up before selling them all. This would leave 28 nucs and another 14 (nuc size) full colonies)

What are your thoughts?

Also, what do you think is a reasonable asking price for a poly nuc and poly hive colony?

lal5000 said:

What's my best strategy?

What are your thoughts?

Click to expand...

Don't get married? a bit like beekeeping, you usually get stung and your bank account is always empty

Either of your plans seem feasible but just remember don't bank on all your queens mating and all your nucs being a success.

Personally I don't think your planned methods are too agressive and should allow build up and a moderate honey crop.

jenkinsbrynmair said:

Don't get married? a bit like beekeeping, you usually get stung and your bank account is always empty

Either of your plans seem feasible but just remember don't bank on all your queens mating and all your nucs being a success.

Personally I don't think your planned methods are too agressive and should allow build up and a moderate honey crop.

Click to expand...

Now that's good advice!

Good to know that's not too aggressive. I also plan on rearing another 5/6 queens in mating nucs but good point regarding mating etc. I have learnt that its best to leave them be when mating so will make up the nucs and they will all go away to an out apiary. Any nucs that fail to mate will be combined with the successful ones.

Looks like I will go with the more 'aggressive' option then.

Hopefully there are some good deals on poly nucs in tomorrows sale. Anything under £20 would be ideal!

Any suggestion on pricing?

Since it is not guaranteed that all the queens in your Nucs will get successfully mated, you will need some way of reliably producing extra queens that could then be introduced into those Nucs before you end up with laying workers or else plan to unite Q- with Q+ Nucs.
As an alternative, if you consider using Q mating Mini Nucs - Apideas, Kielers or similar, you could be producing a number of mated queens and these could then be introduced into 3F Nucs. I would suggest this is a more reliable way of producing Q+ Nucs. I recognise that you may need to purchase or make Mini Nucs and depending on the kit to hand, you may also need to source additional Nucs for this project.
When do you plan to do your Q raising and when are you getting married? The month of May is generally favourable for Q production in my locality.
Are you going to rely on a good, chosen colony swarming to give you a source of Q cells? You could be waiting a long time. Are you going to encourage Q cell production using the Hopkins method or some such?
I would encourage you to consider grafting or the Nicot or Jenter systems as you have the ability to raise queens at a time of your choosing rather than waiting for a colony to begin swarm preparations which could be in the week before your wedding....
I plan to be doing a bit of grafting next May and will use a Q- colony to start the cells alongside Q+ finishing colonies and an incubator. Grafts/ QCs will be allocated to Mini Nucs in rotation. Successfully mated Qs will be introduced into colonies and Nucs. To close my Q rearing for the season, I intend to create additional Nucs by splitting the Q- cell starting colony into 5 or 6 and will then introduce mated Queens from earlier batches of Grafts into those to overwinter. I will use Kielers to overwinter some mated Qs also. Of course, plans often change at the eleventh hour.....

lal5000 said:

Aggressive splitting of colonies

Click to expand...

INCREASING FROM 100 TO 1,000 HIVES IN THREE MONTHS

Click to expand...

http://apimondiafoundation.org/foundation/files/137.pdf

Not getting married until early the following year so it wont get in the way.

Will be feeding them up from March onwards on ultra bee patties, then begin rearing in May when the drones are flying.

Will have to buy all the nucs (minus 3).

Will be making a strong colony queenless, feed them and provide with grafted cells from my best performing colony, then back to a Q+ colony for finishing.

I havent had the best of luck with mini nucs. Can never seem to get them to draw comb and then they abscond. Had much better luck splitting a nuc, leaving them a day then adding a ready to emerge cell in a cage. Then removed the cage 2 days after she has emerged.

I use the nicot cup kit on grafting frames.

Hivemaker. said:

http://apimondiafoundation.org/foundation/files/137.pdf

Click to expand...

Yeah - that kind of makes my suggestion rather conservative in comparison!

Suggest you investigate Cloake board method or that proposed in "queen rearing simplifed" by Vince Cook. These methods don't impinge on honey production too much and the colony can be used both for starting and finishing and are more or less fool proof.

masterBK said:

Suggest you investigate Cloake board method or that proposed in "queen rearing simplifed" by Vince Cook. These methods don't impinge on honey production too much and the colony can be used both for starting and finishing and are more or less fool proof.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up.

Will have a look..

lal5000 said:

Hopefully there are some good deals on poly nucs in tomorrows sale. Anything under £20 would be ideal!

Click to expand...

Doubtful, although the WBKA spring convention is on the 25th March and Maisie's usually sell their nucs there for about £25.00 a piece. Alternatively if you buy 10 or more with them mail order they work out under £30.00 each as well.

jenkinsbrynmair said:

Doubtful, although the WBKA spring convention is on the 25th March and Maisie's usually sell their nucs there for about £25.00 a piece. Alternatively if you buy 10 or more with them mail order they work out under £30.00 each as well.

Click to expand...

I normally use the thornes ones which are priced at £28.50 throughout the year.

Any improvement on that would be nice.

Good to know the WBKA will have them as a back up if i dont find a good deal tomorrow..

I suppose the slight difference in price is that each Maisie's nuc comes with a feeder as standard.

Didnt realise that. The thornes feeders are expensive but handy

That's swayed it in favour of the maisies then..

Lets hope for £25 in the sales! They are £28.35 right now for orders over 10

You could buy in queens for the initial round of splits from your over-wintered colonies. That would give you close to your 14 for 14. I assume this would be done when locally produces queens become available. Not sure when that would be. Mid/late May? Once the queens were laying well, and expanding their broodnests, You could make additional splits, and that's where you should place your cells...which would be reared under the best summer honey flow conditions. Winter them all as nucleus colonies, and expand them into production colonies that second spring. Perhaps keep back a number of them to be used as brood factories...for making nucs that second year. Once you get to that point, you'll wonder what to do with all the bees you'll have in your apiary.

Michael Palmer said:

You could buy in queens for the initial round of splits from your over-wintered colonies. That would give you close to your 14 for 14. I assume this would be done when locally produces queens become available. Not sure when that would be. Mid/late May? Once the queens were laying well, and expanding their broodnests, You could make additional splits, and that's where you should place your cells...which would be reared under the best summer honey flow conditions. Winter them all as nucleus colonies, and expand them into production colonies that second spring. Perhaps keep back a number of them to be used as brood factories...for making nucs that second year. Once you get to that point, you'll wonder what to do with all the bees you'll have in your apiary.

Click to expand...

In an ideal world that would be the best solution.

Issue I have is I am already forking out close to £500 on nucs, I definitely wont have the cash to fork out £800 on queens.

Also, whatever splits I make, I wont be overwintering them. I will be selling them to try and make some cash.

I really am happy to forfeit any honey. Just want to get the numbers up as quickly as possible.

Sometimes it is better for the farm to save this year's production for next year's seed.

Michael Palmer said:

Sometimes it is better for the farm to save this year's production for next year's seed.

Click to expand...

Oh Yeah, right on.

Buying in queens or using mininucs are good suggestions. As soon as full sized frames of bees and brood are made queenless (ie. while youre waiting for a virgin to mate) they're essentially non productive for up to a month, at the wrong time of year for you if you're trying to make best use out of your resources.
I find keeping colonies on at least six frames of brood with plenty of bees keeps the queen laying to potential, any less strength than this slows build up, poly nucs have changed this for the better but all the same it's wise to keep these sort of numbers in mind if you're intending keeping your colonies growing to achieve multiple splits.

Why not take a frame from each hive and make up new colonies in succession? Assuming there are 14 that are strong enough to donate a frame a week you can make up quite a number between the start of May and beginning of August - reinvesting your money in poly nucs as you go. If you're queen rearing at the same time you could make a substantial number of nucs over the course of the season

daroco said:

Why not take a frame from each hive and make up new colonies in succession? Assuming there are 14 that are strong enough to donate a frame a week you can make up quite a number between the start of May and beginning of August - reinvesting your money in poly nucs as you go. If you're queen rearing at the same time you could make a substantial number of nucs over the course of the season

Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea at all!