# Here is Where I'm At - How Do You Suggest I Move Forward?



## Adam Foster Collins

I have been talking with people on the "Brother Adam" thread, and I realized it had wandered too far from the hypothetical, to my specific interests. So I thought I'd begin anew here.

I have 13 colonies of bees. I would like to be treatment free, but fully understand that goal to be a difficult challenge and I am certainly aware of the great controversy that surrounds how to get there.

I would like to maintain a sustainable population of bees; raise my own queens and not have to buy new bees every year. In another thread on a similar subject a while back, Mike Palmer suggested that one would really need around 100 colonies to be sustainable, saying that you'd need those numbers to select from and to handle the ups and downs without collapsing, and to be able to maintain your genetic program (he did not use these words - I'm summarizing my understanding of his post).

Anyway, I have 100 colonies as my goal. I am planning to a lot of nucs; probably 3/4 of my total in the future. 
Right now, I have:

• 4 Queens from three different local beekeepers - all from within 1 hour of my home. Each has been raising queens here for at least a decade.
• 3 Queens from walk away splits from those queens
• 5 Buckfast Queens from Bill Ferguson in Ontario
• 1 Queen which I got with a swarm in early June. I'm assuming by the timing that this queen has overwintered at least once here.

Right now, 6 of my colonies are overwintering nucs.

There are several beekeepers in within a few miles of me, but I do not believe any of them has more than a couple of hives. Many of them would have queens from the same local beekeepers as the ones I have came from. The rest would be some of the annual import from Hawaii. Some of those come from Kona, and I think they brought some in from Big Island as well.

How would you recommend that I proceed in reaching my goals? Should I attempt to bring in a particular stock? Should I 'deepen the pool' and add the bees of other breeders? Or should I just work with what I have? 

What are some of your thoughts?

Adam


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## Ian

Id work with what you have.

Whats your reasons for going treatment free? There are alot of treatment options other than chemical. Also there are alot of management options to help control varroa. If your idea is to raise bees and live off bees, your going to have to treat and manage your diseases. There is no way around that.


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## Adam Foster Collins

I think everyone would like to go treatment free, wouldn't they?

I've used oxalic vapor and drone comb removal. And will do what I have to do to make it work. But I've never tried treatment free, and figure it's better to try it sooner - while I don't have many colonies - than to try it later, when I have so much more at stake.

On the other hand, I feel that if I am running a lot of nucs, and splitting a lot, the the brood breaks should stem the tide of mites to some degree as well. I'm certainly not against anyone else's methods, and I love to hear about them. I'm just trying to find the best one for me and my own bees.

Adam


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## Adam Foster Collins

Deleted. repeat.


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## Ian

Yes, everyone would if it was possible and if it were just as easy as figuring breeding will solve the whole issue. Breeding has focused on this problem for quite a while, and we have yet to find anything that satisfies the problem.

We take bees out of their natural environment, we take them pretty much where ever we choose to raise them, we manage them in workable frames and manipulate their growth to manage production from them, we feed them to manage growth and to prevent starving, we move them to flowering fields and into conditions more suitable during durths, we wrap them up or move them to help manage the winter, we choose the breeding selections for them to bring in traits and characteristics more suitable to our needs,
So when it comes to disease control, why would we not treat to control the disease pressures? Everything else we do to manage the hives is not natural or normal for the bees,.?


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## justusflynns

My reasoning for wanting to do so would be that there is nothing in your second paragraph with any potential to harm my health, but that can't be said across the board for disease treatment. Better safe than sorry, or in this case better safe and sorry.


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## Michael Palmer

Adam Foster Collins said:


> How would you recommend that I proceed in reaching my goals? Should I attempt to bring in a particular stock? Should I 'deepen the pool' and add the bees of other breeders? Or should I just work with what I have?


Patience Grasshopper. 

This is a long term project and nothing you're going to accomplish overnight...or in a year or in five. You need to build up your numbers, learn successful queen rearing, bring in other stocks to incorporate with yours. Change over the drone population in your area, and select and select and select. 

You have all the parts of the puzzle...the options have been given in answers to all your questions. Get out there and do it...and have your failures and successes. Two steps forward and one step back...or...

Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow...


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## deknow

Listen to Michael.....he is a wise man.

I understand your frustration....you want to do things "right". you can ask and read all you want...but the true learning is when you are in the field by yourself, making decisions based upon what you know......and late at night when you are second guessing everything you have done.

Deknow


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## squarepeg

there you are adam, and straight from the masters' keyboards. i believe you are asking all the right questions and have a good idea of where you want to go. 

i'm not sold on treatment free for the reasons ian laid out. on the other hand, i will do my best to propagate bees that require little to none.

justusflynns, beware of eating raw honey, it contains formic and other organic acids.


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## Ian

why or how does controlling disease create any potential harm to our health? 
now not treating sick animals does create huge health problems 



justusflynns said:


> My reasoning for wanting to do so would be that there is nothing in your second paragraph with any potential to harm my health, but that can't be said across the board for disease treatment. Better safe than sorry, or in this case better safe and sorry.


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## nada

im sure a lot of people dont view flying insects in the same light as dogs and cats. and rightly so


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## Ian

alot of people don't understand food production and the reason why we keep our stock healthy, be it four legged animals or flying bugs


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## nada

what do they not understand?


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## D Semple

Adam,

I've found keeping very detailed records pretty well shows me my mistakes and which colony/queens are actually doing best in my area and for my management. 

One of the great benifits of being treatment free is that queen selection actually becomes much easier. 


Like you I'm at that growing stage with lots of questions (40 hives wanting to get to 500).


Don


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## Ian

nada said:


> what do they not understand?


the need to keep stock healthy and consequences otherwise


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## Ian

D Semple said:


> Adam,
> 
> One of the great benifits of being treatment free is that queen selection actually becomes much easier.
> 
> 
> Don


I think there is a wide spectrum of what beekeepers consider treatment free as being, 
Adam, for the purpose of your question, what do you consider treatment free?


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## justusflynns

1) Using known carcinogens in something you plan to gather food from.
2) Not if they are culled.


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## nada

Ian said:


> the need to keep stock healthy and consequences otherwise


what are the known consequences of attempting to develop disease free honeybees?


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## garusher

I like the idea of following Mother nature.

http://www.homeoint.org/morrell/misc/darwin.htm


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## JRG13

Adam,

I don't think you need that many colonies. Introduce lines that have traits you want time to time to keep your diversity around. It really depends on what other drones are around too, if you think it's scant you can boost your drone counts with various methods and have dedicated drone mothers with different backgrounds if you want to keep desirable traits around. Just keep in mind like people are saying, it's something you work up too and it's good to set goals but keep them flexible. I think it just really comes down to taking queen data, evaluating hives for behaviors/traits you like and making sure you keep those stocks around while bringing in outside genetics in time to time to keep hybridity at a reasonable level. I would say with 10-15 good breeding hives you'd be set for a small-medium sized operation. Grafting and screening from those you could easily add 20-30 production hives a year just selecting 2 good daughter queens from each.


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## Ian

nada said:


> what are the known consequences of attempting to develop disease free honeybees?


complete loss of equipment because of AFB
complete loss of stock because of mites and such


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## Adam Foster Collins

I didn't mean to create a thread about treating or not treating for mites, but I do appreciate that it's a part of what I outlined as a goal. 

Ian, I feel ya. I do. I'm not suggesting that I wouldn't treat if I needed to. And have no illusions about it perhaps not being possible. But I've never really tried not treating in earnest, and when I read that others are doing it successfully to whatever degree that amounts to in relation to their goals - then I feel that I should give it a shot at some point, and what better time to do it than now? What does anyone really _*know*_ about beekeeping that they haven't themselves? You know what I mean?

To me, treatment free means not doing things specifically to combat mites - it's all related to the mite issue. At the same time, I also recognize that creating a nuc-based operation could have an effect on mite counts, so that is potentially a 'treatment' of sorts. Also, I am hoping to stack the odds in my favor by making more colonies on less gear. 

Mike Palmer and Dean - Absolutely. There's no question that it all hangs on the doing. At the moment, we're looking at getting our first snow here tonight. The bees are in for the winter. I've moved to my winter activities, which amount to research and building. In the basement workshop, I'm building enough gear so that I come out of hibernation with the gear for 45 hives - 30 of them double nucs as you have shown in your presentations. 

*• I've been working with another local beekeeper here, trying to learn whatever I can from his experience, and to have someone who doesn't wear out on the subject of bees to talk to. I did a cut-out with him this summer, and plan to do more next season. I've visiting still others to glean what I can from what they know as well. 

• I built 10 swarm traps last winter, and secured places for them this season. I got one swarm, and had lot's of activity at others. I have secured places for them again next spring.

• I have tried to contact anyone around me that has worked on raising queens in the area to learn from them.

• I have been in contact with provincial authorities regarding the closed border regulations, and succeeded in getting a permit to bring in queens this past summer, which is how I got the Buckfasts.

• I have been in touch with science departments of Canadian universities to try and get information on what they know about resistant bees in our climates, and to learn what they can tell me about the progress of any projects aimed at building mite and disease-resistant stocks in Canada.

• I have been in contact with breeders in different parts of Canada regarding their stock in case I decide to apply for 2013 permits.

• I have secured sufficient yard space close to home. One of those yards is quite isolated from other beekeepers, and could be a mating yard site in the future. The city I live in (where most of my bees are now) has a pesticide ban, and has had one in place for three years. 

• I will begin to work on queen rearing this season, which I need to learn and am excited about.

• After three and a half years of continuous bee-obsession on my part, my partner Angie, has gone from annoyed, to tolerant, to a sudden and very strong interest in bee-products-based-handmade-soaps-and cosmetics. This could be the greatest development yet.

• Local pollination is something I'm looking at, as the province is a huge fruit grower (apples, blueberries, cranberries, etc) and has had a consistent shortage of bees. There are also an increasing number of organic operations here, which is nice. People are getting as much as $150 a hive, and most of the farms are within an hour and a half of my house. This is part of why I'm aiming at higher numbers. Also, none of the farm areas are very large, which means that bees placed there for pollination still have a pretty wide variety of other types of forage around. So I feel like pollination locally is not going to be especially hard on the bees... (thoughts?)

• Beyond that, there is a government incentive program offering any beekeeper who has at least 50 hives in pollination in a season, a grant of as much as 50% of the cost of any expansion they want to do.*

So that's a potential shot in the arm if I get to 50 and still want to expand to reach that 100.

I am interested in creating a viable sideline. I'd like to reach $15,000 annual income after expenses. I have not created a business plan or anything yet, as I'm still really just focused on learning about the bees, and which aspects of working with bees I enjoy most. I have made all of my gear out of reclaimed lumber and have spent very little money. Everything I'm building is designed to be cost-effective and as efficient as possible.

I am not over-extending myself economically at all, and won't unless I have a viable business plan.

At this point, it's just doing and learning; thinking and planning.

Adam


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## nada

Ian said:


> complete loss of equipment because of AFB


i dont see how this prevents the possiblity of developing AFB resistant bees


Ian said:


> complete loss of stock because of mites and such


if this were the case then nobody would have bees with improved resistance to varroa. but nonetheless, progress has been made


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## squarepeg

good work adam!


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## Ian

Im not against developing bees that are more tolerant to diseases, 
we as beekeepers can bring these traits into our operation to help minimize the need to relieve disease pressures
disease is always going to be part of looking after animals, no way around it. Our ability to manage those disease losses is what allows us to manage bees

here is a project I am supporting ,

www.saskatraz.com

If your interested in natural selection, this project will be right up your alley. The amount of effort these people put into this project is outstanding. And I am supporting their efforts by bringing their stock into a portion of my operation. For a beekeeper like myself to achieve anywhere near what they have accomplished is impossible. 
Now the other question is how do they measure success in what the project has provided them,.? Time will tell, 
The other question is how does mother nature manage the disease pressures naturally? The answer is looking like she wants to manage mites exactly the opposite way we want to keep our bees


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## Adam Foster Collins

Ian, Saskatraz is one of the operations I've been in touch with for potential import next season. The problem there for me is that the information on their progress is outdated, and communication is very slow. I have mentioned this here before. I'm not knocking them, I'm just saying that for a guy on the other side of the country trying to make decisions on where to get bees on a limited permit - one needs clear, up-to-date information, and prompt communication.

Do you have info on their progress since 2009? How are they doing in terms of reaching their goals?

Adam


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## Ian

nada said:


> i dont see how this prevents the possiblity of developing AFB resistant bees
> 
> if this were the case then nobody would have bees with improved resistance to varroa. but nonetheless, progress has been made


nada, the way these breeders are getting bees that tend to resist AFB is by constant exposure to infected equipment, in isolation, and breeding the survivors. 
Is that a project you would like to experiment in your own operation? 
The project is a death sentence for most all the bees put into that breeding program, and the equipment is lost.

The same with these mite natural selection projects, countless number of hives go into these projects, and most all of them die off, taking the surviours as nature allows. Im not talking tens of hives, im talking thousands of hives and breeding projects. 
Is that a project a beekeeper is willing to take up? Probably would bankrupt the best of them, so instead we take breeding stock from these projects.


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## Ian

>>o you have info on their progress since 2009? How are they doing in terms of reaching their goals?

Adam

Thats the thing about these projects, 
Im not in touch with the fellows running the project, just the broker selling the queens
From what i understand, the results from the project is not leading the way we would like to have them go, perhaps the way nature wants to manage the mites is by making a smaller hive and swarming more often, not exactly what beekeepers want.
But I posted the project address to show that there are efforts working in a treatment free setting. 

Adam, it may seem that as soon as someone mentions treatment free, the conversation gets hung up on that fact. And rightly so. Disease control has to be covered before any thing else can be done.

Why would you manage your hives treatment free in terms to mites, but not any of the other diseases ?


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## Ian

>>• Beyond that, there is a government incentive program offering any beekeeper who has at least 50 hives in pollination in a season, a grant of as much as 50% of the cost of any expansion they want to do.

Good as gold!


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## Michael Palmer

Adam Foster Collins said:


> • Beyond that, there is a government incentive program offering any beekeeper who has at least 50 hives in pollination in a season, a grant of as much as 50% of the cost of any expansion they want to do.[/B]


Good old Canadian agricultural support.


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## Adam Foster Collins

Michael Palmer said:


> Good old Canadian agricultural support.


Yes... as long as it lasts...

The twist is that the government is opening the border to pollination from out-of-province. That will likely result soon in a completely open border. That will make the market more competitive and probably bring down what people pay for pollination. It will also bring in a ton of bees. I'm not sure how long the government will have an incentive program, once the fruit industry's pollination needs are satisfied.

Ian, you ask:
"Why would you manage your hives treatment free in terms to mites, but not any of the other diseases ? "

Well, mites aren't a disease, and they haven't been with us very long. I am happy to consider each disease individually.

Adam


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## Michael Palmer

Adam Foster Collins said:


> I am interested in creating a viable sideline. I'd like to reach $15,000 annual income after expenses. I have not created a business plan or anything yet,


That's all? $15,000 from 15 production colonies and 30 wintered double story nucs isn't difficult. The plan isn't difficult to initiate. 

So, in the spring, you have 15 colonies and 30 nucs. Manage the two groups separately. The production colonies should give enough bee resources to keep your numbers up. Might even make a bit of honey...but any honey harvested is gravy. The nucleus colonies are given a third story at the beginning of May...comb if you have it. 

Allow the nucs but build well, and begin harvesting brood and bees from them. Timing? Don't know NS, certainly before they begin swarm preparations. I start here about mid-May, removing brood for cell building. If I were you, I would buy queens at first. so all your brood and bees from the nucs, goes into making more nucs. 

Harvest brood in rotation...harvesting what the nucs give you, one or two or three combs, replacing with comb if you have it, foundation if you don't. Foundation will slow the process. After a couple harvests, you knock the nuc back to two stories, then one, then knocking the remaining bees and brood back to a beginning nuc in strength. If the queen is still prolific, let her stay. Re-queen if she's showing her age. Let that remaining nuc build up as you would a new one...into the second story, and winter all your nucs in two stories. 

Using comb as replacements, I harvested 900 combs of brood from 50 double story nucs in 2011...not a good honey year. 900 combs of brood is enough to make 400+ nucleus colonies. From your 30 nucs, using foundation, I would expect you could make at least 5:1 new nucs to wintered nucs. That would leave you with about 150 nucs going into winter. 

You shouldn't have more than about 10% winter loss in your nucs, once you are experienced enough. That leaves you 135 in the spring. 

You sell 100 four or five frame nucs for what? $125-130? You have four or five combs left over to use in the process. In a few years, with enough combs to use in your nuc making, you can approach 10:1 in your nuc making. You can figure it out from here...how much income you might glean from your bees at that point.

But, early in this, when you're at 5:1, your income should be around that $15,000 you are shooting for. Income from your nuc bees that don't have to be treated, are a back-up for your production colonies, can be used in your breeding program, and require very little in initial investment.

That's how I would write a business plan if I were in your position. You folks chasing the elusive honey crop about the countryside, you should consider this plan. Good honey crops are few and far between. Honey is expensive to produce, in labor and equipment. The money is in the bees.


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## Michael Palmer

Double Post


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## DonShackelford

Thanks for that outstanding bit of info Michael,

I've gathered from previous writings that you also pack up nuc-harvested frames of brood and boost up normal production hives with them, which makes them better honey producers. 

Is that true?

If so, do you leave bees from the nuc on the brood to prevent chilling while driving to yards?

Since you don't do spring splits, can we ask what swarming prevention you practice?


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## jim lyon

That's a real nice business plan Mike and one that could be applied by a lot more readers of Beesource than the plan that we use. A few observations. #1 Mike probably makes it sound a bit easier than it is, first, it's a lot of work and secondly he is a talented beekeeper with a lifetime of experience in honing his skill. #2 If everyone operated as such nucs probably would no longer bring $125 but that would depend on how many people out there are truly dedicated to doing the work it requires. so I will conclude that there probably isn't much danger in that but you would have to develop a customer base. #3. A re-reading of Adams opening post tells us that, like many on here, they are starting out with the desire to be treatment free. The blueprint that Mr. Palmer has layed out is probably not going to be compatible with that goal. One constant in whatever plan you choose is that to get any kind of payback from your beekeeping endeavor requires a lot of dedication and resiliency. Things are never quite as simple as a neat business plan might make them appear.


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## Keith Jarrett

jim lyon said:


> . Things are never quite as simple as a neat business plan might make them appear.


Amen to that.


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## Ian

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Ian, you ask:
> "Why would you manage your hives treatment free in terms to mites, but not any of the other diseases ? "
> 
> Well, mites aren't a disease, and they haven't been with us very long. I am happy to consider each disease individually.
> 
> Adam


I consider them a disease, its the viral infections from the mites that take the hive down,

have you thought about nosema? Especially when talking about pollinating blueberries in Nova Scotia,
I know a guy who use to live close to me here, packed up and is now managing a pollination outfit in New Brunswick. 
Bees going into blue berry pollination look good, bees leaving blue berry pollination look lousy. There is a nutritional deficit on that plant,
for what its worth,

cheers


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## Adam Foster Collins

Ian said:


> ...have you thought about nosema?... Bees going into blue berry pollination look good, bees leaving blue berry pollination look lousy. There is a nutritional deficit on that plant...


Ian, I completely respect your viewpoints. You are running a serious operation in some tough wintering country. (I used to live in central Alberta, and up in Ft McMurray for about 11 years). I'm glad to have your input here.

I've heard that about blueberries, which is why I mentioned the fact that there are a lot of smaller farms here. A friend of mine who pollinates here was telling me about how he's gone to check on the bees in blueberries, and their all in the wildflowers around the property. Most of the farms here aren't a large enough area. There are some large farms, but I really don't imagine that I'll be competing for those big-business contracts. There are plenty of small fruit farmers around that can use help from a little guy like me.

But there are other crops too, and I will certainly consider be health in any plans I make.


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## Ian

I try to be serious lol

I hear they pay somewhat reasonable pollination fees,
you should pay attention to the guys here who pollinate almonds. 
Theme from their conversations are nutrition, disease control, nutrition, moving hives, feeding, nutrition,

yes, small farmers like little beekeepers. But I doubt they will pay you big fees for pollination contracts. More likely they will give you a spot to keep bees on, and will be grateful for your pollination


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## Adam Foster Collins

Michael Palmer said:


> That's all? $15,000 from 15 production colonies and 30 wintered double story nucs isn't difficult. The plan isn't difficult to initiate...


Great. Good to hear a comment from you that doesn't make me re-think everything I'm doing. 



Michael Palmer said:


> Might even make a bit of honey...but any honey harvested is gravy.


That's what I'm thinking. My friend/mentor in the area is building a well-equipped honey house and I will be able to process with him for a low cost if I need it. I have a 28 frame extractor and can do things myself if harvest is not huge. There are good operations around who will buy anything I want to sell as well. At this point, I don't see honey as my core business, but I have relationships with people that do.



Michael Palmer said:


> The nucleus colonies are given a third story at the beginning of May...comb if you have it.


I don't. That's a big challenge at this point, and a part of why I made the decision last year to move from top bar to lang - harvesting gets rid of your comb in a tbh. I still maintain some top bars, and in the urban environment, I can see people being really interested in some top bar nucs, so I'll keep some of that around, but not much. Right now, I have 5 full tbh's and don't have plans for more.

How do you suggest I build up from where I am, given that I have next to no comb resources?

To recap, I have:

• 6 overwintering nucs (5 new Buckfast)
• 6 production colonies
(I have one weak one as well, but I don't think it'll make it. That will leave some comb though)



Michael Palmer said:


> Allow the nucs but build well, and begin harvesting brood and bees from them. Timing? Don't know NS, certainly before they begin swarm preparations. I start here about mid-May...


To be safe, I might say 3rd week of May, but swarming really takes off June 1 here. 



Michael Palmer said:


> Harvest brood in rotation...harvesting what the nucs give you, one or two or three combs, replacing with comb if you have it, foundation if you don't. Foundation will slow the process. After a couple harvests, you knock the nuc back to two stories, then one, then knocking the remaining bees and brood back to a beginning nuc in strength. If the queen is still prolific, let her stay. Re-queen if she's showing her age. Let that remaining nuc build up as you would a new one...into the second story, and winter all your nucs in two stories.


So this process of expanding, harvesting back to one box, and then expanding again before winter - let's look at the timing of that.
If I add a box 3rd week of May, and I've only got foundation, what's my schedule going to look like if I want to be back to the one box by July 15? I figure that's when one want's to be making OW nucs up for the following winter if I don't have enough drawn comb. With comb, I'll move to an August 1 date. This year, we had a dearth and I didn't have comb. My July 25 nucs were light and I had to feed. They built comb pretty well, but were just shy of drawing out all the foundation.



Michael Palmer said:


> You sell 100 four or five frame nucs for what?$125-130?


We're in the land of a $150 norm for 4 frames - often for weak nucs. Some people complaining about 4 frame nucs this year coming with one empty frame. 



Michael Palmer said:


> That's how I would write a business plan if I were in your position...


Mike, you've given me so much good information this year, I feel like I should send you a Christmas present. Some of it has been hard to swallow (like the post about really needing 100 colonies for a truly sustainable operation), but I very much appreciate it. Lot's of work ahead. I've got a basement full of cut stock, painted parts drying, and an order of pine planks from the mill... It's my winter time machine. In a cloud of sawdust - POOF! - it'll be spring.

Thanks again,


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## Adam Foster Collins

Ian said:


> ...you should pay attention to the guys here who pollinate almonds.
> Theme from their conversations are nutrition, disease control, nutrition, moving hives, feeding, nutrition,
> 
> yes, small farmers like little beekeepers. But I doubt they will pay you big fees for pollination contracts...


Good advice on the almond pollinators. But a key difference (I believe) is the size of the farm operations. 

From what I understand, Almonds are enormous areas with little else but almonds on them for bees to feed on. We don't have as many enormous, continuous crops out here. A lot of the farms are on hundreds of acres - not 10's of thousands. So the bee diets are not as restricted to the intended subject of pollination. There aren't a ton of farms that are big enough to cover a bee's forage range. By "small", I mean that they are not the Oxford Foods, 20,000 acre types. They are the 300-1000 acre type operation. And they all pay pretty much the same.

However, as I mentioned, the border is going to open to out-of-province pollination. That will likely challenge current pollination service fees. Almost all of that out-of-province need for pollination is coming from one company - Oxford. And Oxford already serves most of their own needs with their 15,000 colonies. They just need more. My own feeling is that they have found the bee business to be too expensive and is splitting up their resources too much to maintain, so I feel like they may be looking to drop that part of the business and to replace it completely by hiring out the pollination - but they know the local beekeepers can't cover their needs. So they've pressed the government to open the border, so they have legal access to more pollination from the bigger operations in New Brunswick and Quebec - maybe Ontario as well. I expect soon to hear that someone has made a huge deal with them and taken over their bees. _*Pure speculation on my part on all that though.
*_
I doubt the smaller operations will be affected as much, because their contracts are too small for bigger pollination operations to travel far to satisfy. 

That's my outlook at the moment. It is of course, the outlook of an outsider at this point, listening to others in the business. So I'm sure it's full of flaws that can only be corrected by experience.

Adam


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## Lburou

Adam Foster Collins said:


> ...snip... Some of (Michael Palmer's) has been hard to swallow (like the post about really needing 100 colonies for a truly sustainable operation), but I very much appreciate it...snip...


Adam, if you get queens occasionally from the best breeders who do all the scientific things to keep their genetics broad, and improving resistance to mites along the way, you can profit from their work by just using their queens...That saves you the work of maintaning hundreds of hives and allows you to focus on producing bees. JMO 

The $64,000 question is, how long can demand for NUCs keep the price where it is?


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## Adam Foster Collins

Lburou said:


> ...The $64,000 question is, how long can demand for NUCs keep the price where it is?


Who knows? It's been at that price for years, and word is that one of the biggest sellers in this region may soon pack it in...


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## Lauri

You are now, where I was last year. Here is a short version of what I did and how I ended up. ( Short version I say, because if I talk about all the details, this post will end up the size of a book)

As a second year beekeeper, My intent for 2012 was to learn to raise queens. Having an interest in Genetics and being a livestock breeder for many years, this was a natural choice for me with the experience I've obtained from 30+ years of small home farming. I planned to have a fair sized hobby apiary and needed to generate at least enough income to pay for it. (I call it a hobby apiary because I am doing it all myself with out employees)

In my short season Northern area, I can't have nucs ready for sale early enough for most folks. I absolutely don't want to try to compete and deal with honey production. I wanted to Increase my hive numbers as much as possible to the point I would be self sufficient, have lots of resources available to manage hives and NEVER have to buy Bees again. Not so much because of the cost, because I did not like getting someone else's sloppy seconds. (I'll skip the details)

Raising queens was where my interests lie and also was the only real reliable way for me to make any money with the bees.

Starting out with only 7 overwintered hives, I bought into my plans, purchasing 18 nucs and 25 packages. This amounted to about $3100. More than I was planning, but had the opportunity to pick up some of the packages at the suppliers cost. 

Some Packages were installed onto mini frames which would be used in the mating nucs. (Some mating nucs were also divided deeps.) The lack of drawn frames was the biggest thing holding me back from starting my queen rearing earlier this spring.

I started off both grafting and using the Mann Lake graftless system, having never grafted a queen before or having any lessons or mentor. 

Only reading beesource for my information, I was successful right from the start. I am fortunate to understand Agriculture pretty well and I retain a lot from research. 

I stocked the mating nucs with the now drawn frames rich with brood and stores, harvested my first ripe queens cells and got the ball rolling.
I removed the queens from the purchased nucs and packages and sold them,( Although I culled several of them due to poor performance or nasty trates) replacing them with my first batch of locally mated queens grafted from my best over wintered stock.
Second, third and fourth batchs of queens were sold, with the exception of the most prolific ones. I got the pick of the litter so to speak...One of the big + of queen rearing.

Prolific young queens were left in mating nucs and given room to grow. By late summer, my mating nucs were ether keepers not to be disturbed or had dwindled from taking out queens before allowing them to build up. This is a management error I will rectify this next season. I could have raise one more batch of queens, but I did not want to disturb established and flourishing hives that late in the summer to restock the mating nucs. I had people calling as late as Mid September desperate for queens.

I made enough money to pay for all my bees and some sugar.. So when most of my potentially 'perishable' costs were made up, I had reached a milestone I set for myself for this year. Don't lose any money!
At my height of the summer I had 120 hives, nucs and mating nucs.

I ended up this fall (after selling a few nucs and combining mating nucs) with about 85 strong colonies, about half in double nucs. I had people beating down my door all summer and fall for local queens. I could have raised twice as many and sold them all without shipping or advertising. 

I spent a small fortune on woodenware parts and worked like a mad woman to assemble them. I had no idea I would have this many bees and although I made hives last winter, It was not near enough. I was assembling when I should have been managing the hives and that made for a summer of very long hours with all my other home and farm duties. I look forward to 2013 now that I have my hives and nucs made up, hundreds of new deep frames drawn and filled. No treatments except Hop guard. Nice clean new comb. A beautiful thing All on black Rite cell-small worker sized cells.

I tried to bring in some interesting genetics from a well known queen breeder, but that did not work out. (I will also not comment on that very unfortunate experience) That was my only financial loss.

My biggest problem? My bees did too well and I was too busy. Bummer, huh?

I'm going into winter with exciting genetics and lots of Daughter queens to play with next year. 

My increase in hives and ability to continue financially is a direct result of queen rearing.

I estimate it will take me two-three years to make enough to cover all my woodenware, tools and hard costs resulting in about 100 hives and 100 mating nucs. After that time, well I might just be able to hold onto some of those $$. Wouldn't that be nice

My education was pretty intense having this many hives this fast. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone but if you are a hard worker and have confidence in your ability it is certainly possible. I'm happy with the results of my 2012 season.

I'd like to get an Insemination set up eventually, but I'll have to be generating a good income before I buy into that.

I have one quick example: I also raise vegetable seedlings. One year I grew about 30 different types of cherry tomatoes, all in hanging baskets in a row around my greenhouse. My customers would walk around to each type and enjoy a side by side taste test. It was amazing the difference you could detect between each tomato. I did it because people constantly wanted tomato varieties that were familier to them, but were not the best for flavor. They actually spit out the sweet 100's compared to the grape tomato types.

This is the experience I got with my bees this year. I had several different types with different traits. Side by side the difference was amazing and easy to choose the superior genetics.




















Funny, I started beekeeping because I like woodworking. Now I'm just goin' with the flo



















I almost hate to write anything at all. I imagine I'll read this post next year and cringe at my ignorance. LOL, I hope not.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Miller-Compound-HoneyBees-and-Agriculture/256954971040510


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## RiodeLobo

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Who knows? It's been at that price for years, and word is that one of the biggest sellers in this region may soon pack it in...


Smells a lot like opportunity... and higher prices.


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## Adam Foster Collins

Lauri,

Thank you for sharing your experience. One question: If you sold enough to cover the cost of your bees and sugar, then you sold over 120(ish) queens. How did you connect to a market to sell all of those queens as only a second year beekeeper? How did you get the customers? Were most purchased by a few customers? Or did you have many customers buying small numbers?

Adam


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## Lburou

Reports like Lauri's make me humble. Good going Lauri!


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## Joseph Clemens

I am a horticulturist, and was attempting to develop a business, propagating and selling plants. Beekeeping had been a minor hobby since before I was ten years old (I'm now 56). I hadn't planned to become a producer/supplier of queens and nucs. I did plan to expand my apiary from less than six colonies to at least a dozen. Once I reached a dozen hives (they had all been grown from an initial single cut-out). At this point their undesirable traits developed into more than just an occasional annoyance. I had already attempted requeening these hives, but the traditional methods, just didn't work. I investigated the best possible way to get queen acceptance, so built my first ever nucs. I obtained Cordovan Italian queens (to help identify the success of my efforts). In purchasing these few queens, I realized the only way I could afford to requeen all my hives, was to raise additional queens, for myself. So I taught myself to raise queens. Other beekeepers realized that I was raising queens -- now I can't raise enough queens, fast enough, to meet even a small fraction of the demand.

We (my wife and I), are letting the business grow itself, only investing some of the profit back into the business to expand as much as we are comfortable with. Anticipating that there will come a point where we may need employees to expand further.


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## Michael Palmer

jim lyon said:


> That's a real nice business plan Mike and one that could be applied by a lot more readers of Beesource than the plan that we use. A few observations. #1 Mike probably makes it sound a bit easier than it is, first, it's a lot of work and secondly he is a talented beekeeper with a lifetime of experience in honing his skill. #2 If everyone operated as such nucs probably would no longer bring $125 but that would depend on how many people out there are truly dedicated to doing the work it requires. so I will conclude that there probably isn't much danger in that but you would have to develop a customer base. #3. A re-reading of Adams opening post tells us that, like many on here, they are starting out with the desire to be treatment free. The blueprint that Mr. Palmer has layed out is probably not going to be compatible with that goal. One constant in whatever plan you choose is that to get any kind of payback from your beekeeping endeavor requires a lot of dedication and resiliency. Things are never quite as simple as a neat business plan might make them appear.


#1 Yes, certainly. But it's really not that difficult to set up and manage nucleus colonies. Easier I would say than managing production colonies. And besided, you can't get high unless you try.

#2 Actually, the demand is so huge I expect high prices for quality bees to continue. The customer base is there, you just have to drill a hole and tap into it.

#3 Actually, having a nucleus colony operation within your apiary operation is totally in step with Adam's desire to be, in some degree, treatment free. Nucleus colonies are different than production colonies. They never have to be treated. Production colonies will crash and nucleus colonies will thrive...at least the first year. So you have a source of healthy bees to replace dead-outs, requeen duds, and work on your breeding program.

>>Things are never quite as simple as a neat business plan might make them appear.<<

Of course things never are. When someone tells me that "All I gotta do is"...bells and whistles go off in my head. Nothing is so simple as that. But, ask some of the folks on these pages...beginners mostly...how difficult was it to setup and winter nucleus colonies?


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## Adrian Quiney WI

Mike, don't forget the "F" word. This year I doubled my number of nucs from 9 to 18. I sold 44 frames of bees to my former package supplier. I sold 2 of my nucs to people who approached me about them from my online prescence. I made 1900 pounds of honey from the 18 production colonies I ran - these colonies were kept at strength by taking brood from my nucs.

I am a beek of only 3 years experience with one bee yard. Additionally, I started the year with no stores of drawn brood comb, and half of my medium honey supers were filled with undrawn comb. They are all drawn now.
This was not all plain sailing, probably because of my inexperience and the lack of drawn comb I lost some swarms. Probably more than 6, and catching swarms that issued from my hives and nucs ate into my time and enthusiasm. It was frustrating to come home from work, want to chill out, and instead have to start shaking bees off trees. I underestimated how productive they can be. Secondly, 1900 pounds of honey is more than I needed to make; I would have been better off selling bees. If I had not sold the 44 frames of brood, and instead expanded them into other colonies I cannot imagine how many colonies I would own now.

A few thoughts for the OP. I attribute a large part of my success this year to luck and weather - I happen to live in a great forage area, scruffy woods, marginal land, and some crops. I have not treated for mites, and saw some DFV at the end of the season in my production colonies, and some of my nucs. As of today I have 18 2 storey nucs and 12 hives in 10 frame equipment enrolled in OD Frank overwintering challenge.

Beyond those hives are three more not in OD's challenge. The first is a light colony in a double deep that crashed I shook out for the frames it had died with a cluster the size of an egg, the other two were in a double deep and double and a medium respectively. These were also "mitey" and I planned to shake them out for the frames, but when I came to them I had a sudden change of heart, because the bees were in a reduced cluster size the size of an orange and a grapefruit. I thought listen to all you have been assimalating all year. What I have learned from MP, whether he has said it directly or I am just extrapolating it I'm not sure, is that bees need to be in a cluster that is proportionate to the size of the cavity they are in. So instead of shaking them out on the frozen ground (and prying their cold dead fingers off the frames) I put the 2 or 3 frames they were clustering over into 5 frame nucs, and added a frame of honey to each. I am going to watch them over the winter and see what they do, they are light on stores so they may get a mountaincamp sugar boost.

All of the anecdotal evidence seems to be pointing the same way: Earlier in this thread Ian said that the Saskatraz bees want to live in smaller colonies and swarm often to survive the mites; MP says he doesn't need to treat his nucs; Mel Disselkoen says that you can outbreed the mite and not treat, and most critically he says "The art of beekeeping does not require full-strength hives at all times of the year, only during your surplus honey flows"; Seeley and others show that bees prefer a cavity of about the size of 10 deep frames when given a choice.

So for a miticide free regimen this is my plan: 
1) Overwinter in 2 story 5 frame nucs.
2) Bond test the production colonies. Those that make it can be used to make some queens, in the meantime until the big freeze I consider them as caretakers of comb to use on next years splits. There is no need to protect them from wax moths as the bees do that for me.
3) Expand the nucs into 10 frame equipment for honey production when the time is right.
4) Use overwintered queens in my operation.
5) Mate queen cells in nucs and grow them on without interrupting them. 
6) Rinse and repeat.

Back to the "F" word. The nucs are incredible fun. It is not hard to set them up, and I think that the bees themselves are telling us they are the way to go. All we have to do is listen and adapt.


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## Lauri

QUOTE=Adam Foster Collins;871611]Lauri,

Thank you for sharing your experience. One question: If you sold enough to cover the cost of your bees and sugar, then you sold over 120(ish) queens. How did you connect to a market to sell all of those queens as only a second year beekeeper? How did you get the customers? Were most purchased by a few customers? Or did you have many customers buying small numbers?

.
Adam[/QUOTE]

Most of my customer bought in small numbers. I advertised on Craigs list a bit, but most of my customers got my name and phone # from my local bee and woodenware supplier, who is well established in this area, but does not raise or supply queens. He gave my name out to a ton of people. Once the clubs came out here and saw what I had going on, they also put my name and contact info on their web sites. Word just spread by itself from there. Everyone's story was Quite interesting.
I lost count of the queens after while, but raised about 165. I kept half of those but I sold the purchased package queens too. I sold a hand full of nucs and a few hive parts. I had hoped to sell more woodenware, but as soon as I made them, I was filling them with bees. I am trying to have some parts in stock for resale this year, but don't want to spend too much money on inventory just yet. Still kind of feeling the waters so to speak. My bee supplier is the biggest woodenware supplier in my area, he is close to 90. I believe and one day will retire. I would like to be established well enough by that time to take over his clientele.

My sales were actually quite minimal, when you consider the potential once I am better established. My reward for all my work this year is the resulting increases in my apiary size and improved stock.(Not to mention everthing I learned)

A problem I have now is all these people want me to teach them or come to their clubs to speak. I absolutly do not want to do that, but they are insistant. I hate it when someone does something for a month or two, then thinks they are an expert. I have achived a lot and am pretty happy with how things went, but I know there are many details I don't know yet. All I can do is talk about what I did to get this far...read beesource, find some money to invest and work long hours. I'm busy and a bit on the reclusive side and talking to people for more than 10 minutes is not my favorite thing. I'll just have to figure out where I fit in to that whole aspect. One of my problems is I tend to give too much information too fast and people get the deer in the headlights look in a hurry. 

Most of my customers came out more than once and bought more queens than they planned. It's rare to hear a grown man giggle, but I heard that over and over when I'd take out the frame with the big fat queen and show her and her pattern of brood. LOL.

They liked not having to pay shipping for a small order and being able to see the queen in her mating nuc..seeing her laying pattern,etc. I never banked my queens and they were fresh from their nucs to their new hives. I charged $20.00- $25.00 for the sale of my purchased queens out of the nucs and packages after they had built up enough to harvest the drawn frames, $30.00 for my locally bred queens and $40.00 for those that were marked 'Keepers'. I never had anyone squeek at my prices. They were attracted to my Glenn Daughters especially, but I kept most of those daughters myself for my VSH stock. (Plus I had to cull a fair percentage of those Glenns do to poor performance. They had a wide range of reliability)

I had another breeder queen who's daughters far out performed the first generation of the Glenns and I grafted mostly from her this year.
That's why I wish I had insemination equipment. Crossing the most prolific daughters from these two lines in a controlled setting could be amazing.

Also I would assume being a woman beekeeper makes me stand out somewhat. Many people have come out here, looked around at what I have going on with the bees, horses, garden etc. and tell me, "You're livin' my dream" 
It makes them want to come back and bring their friends.


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## odfrank

>OD Frank overwintering challenge. Beyond those hives are three more not in OD Frank overwintering challenge. Beyond those hives are three more not in OD's challenge

LET'S CLEAR SOMETHING UP HERE !!!!!!

IT IS NOT MY CHALLENGE. DUFFUS BRAIN CHARLIE B SET OUT THE CHALLENGE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION AND JUST NAMED IT AFTER ME!!!!
FUNNY GUY, CHARLIE B !!!!

I don't give a bee's poop how many of your hives died this winter, how many queens you raised, or how many bait swarms you catch. I just want to sit all winter in my shop next to my wood stove fueled with hive manufacture scraps holding my WTK brad hammer in my old wrinkled hands nailing together and wiring frames while the delicious scent of wafting pine and redwood smoke swirl around my bald old head. I will also set aside some time to mail out some BeeBee Tree whips and eat a few scones topped with eucalyptus honey and heated atop my woodstove.


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## squarepeg

frank, never underestimate the value of a bee's poop, and while you're sittin' there, pass me a scone.


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## Adam Foster Collins

Lauri said:


> Also I would assume being a woman beekeeper makes me stand out somewhat...


I am actually noticing that more and more women seem to be taking up beekeeping. I've been 'into' bees my whole life, and believe me, it wasn't something that generally "got ya dates" for most of that time.

But now it seems that if the subject gets mentioned at a gathering or something, it seems that more women are interested in it than the men are. I'm not sure if it's the connection to nature, a healthy environment, or what, but there seems to have been a marked shift in the bee demographic.

Of course, that's a personal observation, and maybe there are statistics which show a different picture. But that's the view from my house.

Adam


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## grozzie2

Adam Foster Collins said:


> I am actually noticing that more and more women seem to be taking up beekeeping.
> 
> ...
> Of course, that's a personal observation, and maybe there are statistics which show a different picture. But that's the view from my house.


Simlar view from our house. We actually host the extractor for the local club, so, any members that want to use the club extractor, have to come here to get it. At least half of the folks that picked it up this year, were women. A couple of them had a hubby along to help with the heavy lifting, but, no mistake about it, they are 'her bees', and he's just there to fullfill the role of 'strong back' getting the extractor loaded onto the pickup.


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## Lauri

It could have something to do with the baby boomer generation being broke, or at least uncertain of our economy. Priorities and spending habits for many have changed.

99 % of my customers are still men. I only had two women all summer. Most women I talk to shudder at the thought of bugs and they put bees in that catagory. My mother in law won't even come out to our house anymore since I have bees.

Half my vegetable seedling sales are to men too. If I had flowers, I'd get more women I think. Women raised in the country are generally willing to try things like hunting, fishing and beekeeping, etc. Things most city raised women would never consider doing. Generally speaking of course, but that's been my experience.
I guess what I am trying to say is they have to be introduced to it. Take for instance the movie, the Hunger Games. Archery has been dominated by men for years. Now there is a flood of young women learning to shoot because of that movie.

Let's get Angelena Jolie into beekeeping. Then see how many woman tend bees


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## grozzie2

Ian said:


> The other question is how does mother nature manage the disease pressures naturally? The answer is looking like she wants to manage mites exactly the opposite way we want to keep our bees


Interesting you mention that. My reading has led me to believe, that's essentially the trait that has allowed the Primorsky (russian) bees to co-exist with the mites as well. Smaller clusters, and, a propensity to swarm.

If that's what the folks running sakatraz are finding, guess that's what research is all about, and, more often than not, the hard data doesn't point in the direction one had hoped it would lead....


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## Michael Palmer

odfrank;871682 I just want to sit all winter in my shop next to my wood stove fueled with hive manufacture scraps holding my WTK brad hammer in my old wrinkled hands nailing together and wiring frames while the delicious scent of wafting pine and redwood smoke swirl around my bald old head. I will also set aside some time to mail out some BeeBee Tree whips and eat a few scones topped with eucalyptus honey and heated atop my woodstove.[/QUOTE said:


> Ah winter. If eating scones with eucalyptus honey doesn't crack a smile on that "bald old head", I guess nothin' will.


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## Lauri

OdFrank, are you throwing out another challenge?
How about warm, man sized chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven?

(Nice thing about winter..I don't have my veil on and can actually eat something.)


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## Lburou

Lauri, we've seen most of your queen set up in bits and pieces in various threads, I would welcome a thread dedicated to how you solved each of the hurdles you encountered as you gathered everything to graft, grow, incubate and incarcerate the virgin queens until you put them in a NUC. I'm particularly in the dark about a source for those finishing frames and special cages you use. TIA 

Thanks for starting this thread Adam


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## DonShackelford

This thread has helped me decide what direction to go.

I've been back in bees one year, and have been considering the various ways to manage them. I just hit a home run on lumber. I'm picking up 2,000 2' lengths of 1x6 this weekend for a very good price. I plan to make 5 frame deeps out of all of it. We all bring our talents to the table. What I lack in beek skills can be compensated for by being a carpenter. 

I've also found most beeks selling bees around here to be totally lacking in customer skills. Probably one reason Lauri had such good luck selling queens. (Congrats Lauri!) Who wants to do business with a gruff old beek when they can talk to a nice person interested in cheerfully answering questions? The fact is, I am a gruff old beek, but I can still conduct business cheerfully and with sincere interest in my customer's welfare. 

I've found setting up and managing nucs fairly easy like MP says.
Raising queens is another story. I'm not sure my eyesight will allow that on any large scale. I see eggs and larva easy enough, but scanning for the queen has become quite a chore with age, just like scanning shelves for a particular part at the hardware store has become much more time consuming. 
I'm using Mel's notching technique to make QC's and have found that very easy as well for use in nucs, but finding that queen again to cage her even in a nuc is a challenge. 

So my direction will probably be focused on nucs and honey until someone invents a queen detector.


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## Lauri

Don, I hatch my queen cells out in a cheap chicken incubator. As they hatch I let them walk around on my hand and then mark them. Put them back into the hair roller cage in the incubator and when I have a few ready, go out and direct release them into the mating nucs. Looking for queens is the biggest time waster for me. I have a great return on them and feel marking them as virgins makes no difference on acceptance, return or longevity in the hive. Makes them super easy to find. And maybe more important, super easy NOT to Miss, when transferring frames. Who hasn't accidentally transferred a queen to another hive? Grrrr. 

I know some people are apposed to marking at all. In that case, I don't know what to suggest. Darn color this year will be red though. I'm not sure how that color will stand out. 










Even this incubator photo need some updating and changes. I needed something to hold the hair roller cages securely and used this soft oassis foam. As soon as the queens hatch, they will crawl down to the bottom of the cage, then up into the old cell looking for a meal. They will die in there and you need to remove the cell soon asap. Trouble with this set up is it is easy to miss the queens on the bottom of the roller cage since it is covered and will miss your chance to remove the cell before they get into it. 

Those queen cells in the incubator were a dinky bunch, but the JZBZ cells were packed full of royal jelley-so I hatched them out. It ended up being a great batch of queens. How can a large queen come out of a dinky cell? I almost chucked the whole bunch. 










Below: Newly hatched and marked. 









Here is the virgin on a direct release, I always place them on a good feed frame. Upon releasing they will always find a good cell and dive into it and drink, drink, drink. It's cute to see the young bees run up and feed her too. I have never had a single rejection, as long as they are released within a few hours of hatching. If they hatch overnight, it is still Ok, but I do detect the acceptance is not quite as easy. 









I started out by placing ripe cells in the mating nucs, but liked hatching them out much better. No nucs with unhatched cells to remain queenless for too long and thus non productive, no disturbing the mating nuc to check for a hatch, queens are evaluated and marked already.
(Note: Placing cells works great and is easy to do. I'm not saying it is a bad way, but it is no faster in the long run and a little less productive. I had one laying worker hive I just couldn't fix with a mated queen or virgin. Placing a cell into that was the only way to remove the old layer and get that nuc back on track-but this is another thread)

Here is a video of placing a virgin queen in a mating nuc. This queen was a little older (Over night hatch) and you can see she is very submissive. The receiving bees almost get there hackles up, but do accept her. Ususlly when I release a newly hatched virgin, most of the bees totally ignore her. Only a few young bees will come up and groom her and feed her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhUrIAcA3eQ

This video was taken early on in the summer when I wa still wearing those nasty leather gloves. I changed to surgical gloves and they work great. Basically the bees can still sting me almost as well as gloveless, but I can't feel them crawling all over my hands which creeped me out a bit. A good transition to going gloveless.
For my bigger jobs I use thin rubber kitchen gloves that are tight and much better fitting. I get stung on the hands less with those than my old leather gloves.


Lee, writing that will take some time. I'll work on it and post some more details ASAP. There is a lot of things I'd like to talk about, like checking the queens cells and finding them all beautifully capped, then a few days later finding them all covered with comb. I tried everything Beesource folks said, but ended up grafting directly into the cell cups meant for the Mann Lake graftless system, then as soon as they were capped, covering them with the hair roller cage. I also tried taking out the capped cells and finishing them in the incubator. I had a good hatch rate doing that, but it was slightly lower that letting them ripen in a hive.

I used a tiny paint brush for grafting. I found the Chinese tool was easy to pick up the larva, but I had a hard time getting off the tool. I ended up taking my paint brush and swizzle it around into an older larva's royal jelly, brush it onto the cell cup to prime it so to speak. I just moistened the cup so when I placed the larva, it had some moisture adhesion and came off the brush very clean and easily, without trauma. I would roll my brush clockwise under the larva, and then counter clockwise to get her off.
This photo doesn't show anything really, just how easy it is to graft from black rite cell and new soft comb.









I just took a knife and gently scraped back the comb. The rite cell cells are deep enough to hold the larva and you'll never touch them.


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## beedeetee

I actually like the red color. For me, 99.99% of moving white and yellow dots turn out to be pollen on bees legs. I guess I don't have much red pollen. Blue is another color that is harder for me to use to find queens.


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## Adam Foster Collins

DonShackelford said:


> ...I've also found most beeks selling bees around here to be totally lacking in customer skills....Who wants to do business with a gruff old beek when they can talk to a nice person interested in cheerfully answering questions? The fact is, I am a gruff old beek, but I can still conduct business cheerfully and with sincere interest in my customer's welfare...


I have found this to be absolutely true in my experience as well, and part of what has moved me to go this route.

I have had some experience myself and heard complaints from others about bee-sellers who seem to have no inter-personal skills whatsoever. No one likes handing over money to a person that makes them feel awkward or uncomfortable. By this a mean a person who isn't ready when a customer arrives at the time they agreed on - but makes no apologies, or a person who seems to be trying to push a customer to handle bees without protection because he can see they're nervous. Or a person who speaks to a new beekeeper as if they're an idiot, or a person who gets all bent out of shape if you say you're using a top bar hive...

Customer service goes a long way, and a lack of customer service goes a long way to sending people down the road. To me, it looks like a business opportunity.

Great information, Lauri. Interesting approach in scraping the comb off the plastic foundation for grafting.

Adam


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## squarepeg

lauri, that is some really neat stuff. thank-you for sharing!


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## tefer2

Lauri, is your egg incubator a little giant brand name. I think that I have one of those hidden in my barn.
I'll have to try it out next spring. Thanks for the tip.


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## Lauri

Yes. Little Giant with circulation fan. I did the queen cells exactly the same as hatching eggs. Same humidity level, just little lower temp. My thermometer sensor was on the bottom of the tray-so I set the temp at 92 degrees, figuring the temp at the top was about 4-6 degrees warmer. That heating cable gets HOT.
My gestation length was just right, but interestingly I always had one queen hatch out 12-18 hours early. Most of the batch would hatch out the next day and I'd generally get one or two to hatch 12 -18 hours later. I though it was from my grafting older or younger larva, but I still got that with my graftless grid when I had the egg hatching time down to a few hours. A good lesson if you're finishing IN a hive. Watch out for those early birds. 
You'd wonder if the last few to hatch were from the youngest larva and perhaps be better quality from being treated like a queen earlier with royal jelly. I kept track for a while, but found no difference in productivity between the earlier and later hatching times. 
The little giant absolutly works, but is a little flimsy. I'd like a better quality incubator, but man! Are they spendy!


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## DonShackelford

Lauri, it's amazing what you've done for a first year queen breeder! Thanks for sharing all that info. 
I normally don't use painted queens, but not for the typical reasons; I'm pretty colorblind, and unless the dots are white or yellow, they are of no value to me. Think anyone would mind if my queens were yellow every year? ;-)

"Customer service goes a long way, and a lack of customer service goes a long way to sending people down the road. To me, it looks like a business opportunity."

Amen to that Adam. I've been advertising spring singles on Craigslist that I'm bringing up from Florida in April. Been doing a lot of talking and email answering from novices, and sometimes it does get tiring, but I figure if I'm not doing anything else I might as well be trying to make a sale.

Picked up my first load of that lumber today. There will be more than I thought, at least 2300 2' 1x6 and 350 10' 2x4's.. I got a great deal on about 100 8'x10' specialty pallets made from real 1x6 and real 2x4's. Some dis-assembly required. There are 8 stacks of these. My son and I spent the day going through 2 stacks. I'm so sore I can barely move. The things we do to be beekeepers!


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## Lauri

Thanks Don. It has luckily worked out well. 
I don't mind the novices at all. But what I hate is people calling me up and saying 'I _THINK_ my hive is queenless." That makes me shudder. I tell them to be sure before they spend their money, they really need a queen. I tell them about all the situations the hive may appear queenless, make sure there is not a virgin in there or one out on a mating flight during the day.... and the deer in the headlights look starts to show, even over the phone. 

I am a lumber hoarder. Don't tell me about any good deals. I have some 3" thick select deck left over from a job site stored up in my loft. It's beautiful..if I can think of something to make out of it. I'm thinking a door with a radius top for my canning room..build it like an old time Castle door with all the heavy steel hardware and large Clavos nails. 
Here is a door my husband built me recently for my barn work shop stall. We are still looking for just the right hardware to install it. A friend of ours got some big hindges of old railroad cars for his barn doors, but they are hard to find.





































My woodworking skills are usually limited to smaller projects. It was interesting to watch him build this door. It was made out of regular 1 1/2" car decking.


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## squarepeg

lauri, i really want to complement you for thinking outside the (bee)box.

you deserve a lot of credit, and i sense that you are happy with your innovating.

that's my favorite reward from beekeeping.

if you take a round peg, and look at it from the side, it always looks the same, no matter what angle you look at it from.

a square peg on the other hand, gives you different views, depending on the angle you are looking from.


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