# Five to thirty five



## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

So how possible do u think it is to go from five to thirty five hives in one year without buying any? My goal for next year is this. I am going to buy some buckfast and a few nucs from northern Alabama. How feasible do u think this goal is?


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Pretty Aggressive. Check Michael Palmers website he has section on this I think. www.bushfarms.com

I went from 40-150 in a year but, I bought Nuc's and packages. If you split so aggressively you will have no honey. So it is honey or bee's can do both very well.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I'm confused, you said you weren't buying bees but then you're buying nucs???? Or is it, you're buying this year, then going to try for 35 next year??


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## DBeeCooper (Apr 28, 2010)

will you catch swarms?


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

EastSideBuzz said:


> Check Michael Palmers website he has section on this I think. www.bushfarms.com


The website that EastSideBuzz provided the link to above is Michael Bush's, not Mike Palmer's. If Mike Palmer has a website, it is certainly hard to find!


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

Five to thirty five hives............I believe it's very possible, but I don't think by splitting, but I could be wrong. The best way to achieve your goal is to get with your animal control center and be the go to person for swarms! Do cut outs, swarm trapping and split your hives. If I wanted to, I could have easily went from four hives last spring to at least fifty by June just on swarm calls alone. 

If you only split your own hives I think you would spend a fortune in bred queens, sugar syrup and you would need perfect conditions! 

Like what was mentioned, Michael Palmer would be the person to chime in on this thread as he has some great insight on this aspect of beekeeping for sure!


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> The website that EastSideBuzz provided the link to above is Michael Bush's, not Mike Palmer's. If Mike Palmer has a website, it is certainly hard to find!


 oops.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

I tend to think that more queens make more bees. So just hypothetically if 5 queens can fill 6 hives with be4s. why can't 35 queens fill 35 hives. Or another way to look at it. If you where going to buy 35 packages. Could you just make 35 packages from your 5 hives? 

In reality I started 2 5 fame nucs this past summer from just one hive. My limiting factor was frames that where ready. It was late summer and I was not able to count on my bees drawing comb. Maybe if I started as early as possible in the spring I could split one hive into 5 nucs. but I woudl be giving up any hope of harvesting honey. I woudl still have worked my tail off and gotten nothing but hives for it. Which is more expensive. buying nucs at $100 a pop or making splits and loosing all production. I figure a lost harvest of 50 lbs can be worth as much as $300. There are lots of ways to look at it. some require performance. others are good enough with whatever you get.

I have seen hives started with a cup full of bees and a queen in a box not much bigger than your fist. You can make them by the dozens that way. they also take a lot of care. So can you produce 35 queens give each one a bare minimum of queens and get them going? probably. I woudl probably make more like 50 queens for a 50% safety margin myself though.


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## D Semple (Jun 18, 2010)

I went from 12 to 40 + just by catching swarms and doing removals this last year.

Left my original 12 hives alone to be production hives.

Stock up on equipment early.

Don


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

JRG13 said:


> I'm confused, you said you weren't buying bees but then you're buying nucs???? Or is it, you're buying this year, then going to try for 35 next year??


Yes I said I wasn't going to buy any but I am going to buy a few from a local on here and I want to get some buckfast from Canada. So if I take account for those I could have fourty.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Thanks for the replies. I am going to be aggressively splitting early spring as all my hives at this moment are three deep as of yesterday. I am hoping to get some swarms also next year so I can have a diversity of drones to start queen rearing next year also. I got enough deeps to start out in the spring probly splitting each hive three to four times plus the swarms. This spring I started with two and split those three times this year and got a good honey crop that I haven't taken yet. I am going to let them get the rest filled since they are all foundationless and treatment free. They are booming like the storm coming up the eastern coast.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Having attempted something like this, let me weigh in from my experience.

Last year, I went from 10 to something like forty at one point, but considering the actual conditions and the actual production of queenright hives, it's more like 7 to 33.

I would say it can be done, if done properly, but the probability is slim on actually ending up with exactly what you're wanting.

Here's how I did it:

Using the queenright cell builder technique http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/benhardenmethod.html http://parkerfarms.biz/experiments.html and using two hives, I made a total of 28 successfully raised and capped queen cells. Using those hives and 6 others, I made three frame mating nucs (one frame brood, one stores, one empty) and placed them in queen castles http://parkerfarms.biz/queens.html#Mating_Nucs Successfully hatched and mated queens (~85%) were placed in five or ten frame nucs (where they increased rapidly to fill the empty space) or used to requeen a couple of dinker hives I had.

Caveats: While it can be done (I believe), you are relying upon a roll of the dice and it is very important that you have enough frames of brood (your five hives must be very healthy) to make mating nucs. You can make all the queens in the world, but they're not all going to come back from their mating flights and they're not all going to lay eggs. According to Michael Palmer, a third are going to be dinks anyway. The process will always be ongoing. You will also need the equipment. I built mine over last winter, 10 3x3 queen castles, and something like a dozen plywood mating nucs, and I have one hive that is 4 five-frame nucs in one big box.

Having attempted something very similar to what you, I say it could be done. Your limiting factor will be the amount of brood your five hives have and I'm just not sure you'll succeed on that count. It all depends on the hives. Perhaps you should plan conservatively for 20-25 and get what you can. It's up to you.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Thanks Solomon. I am building my own equipment now since this year I put more money in tools then I did the hives. I can make two full hives with one 16x12 one inch pine and screen for the bottom board. All together one full hive runs me about twenty dollars with SBB hive body and insulated cover. I will still buy the frames since they are cheaper to buy then to try to make. Plus I like to just put them together when they come in. I am making all deeps at this moment to insure I have frames to start out in a good position next year. The winter here is short and they have probly 60 to 80 lbs. of surplus honey on each hive. I have two breeder queens that are still laying frames of brood this late. The hives are very healthy and slammed of bees.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

Very interesting Solomon, thanks for your insight! 

Beecrazy, I wish you the best if luck with this expansion, I really do, and I also would like to see updates in the spring as to how your process is going. I have eight hives right now myself and would like to be up to at least twenty going into next summer, should be easy enough, but I also don't know how many will make it through winter. I also plan on catching more swarms in the spring as 7 of my 8 hives are swarms from last spring and they are troopers! 

Good luck and don't forget to make some swarm traps and set a line of them as well! Free bees and they are sure to draw out the foundation less frames quickly!


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

Odfrank goes from 40 to 0 then back up to 80 catching swarms!


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

5 to 35 is not hard. You will need all equipment ready and some time. You won't get much honey and you will feed more than average. If you raise queens then it will be tough because one hive has to raise queens. Buying queens is much easier because they are mated but it costs more.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Rak. My plans are not to buy the queens except for the buckfast from Canada for my hives next year. I am going to start early and run as late as I can with making up the hives. I am going as inexpensive as possible since I am looking to spend some money on II equipment next year. I am venturing head on into queen rearing and expansion. I am going to be pushing the envelope to see what can be done with my bees next year. By the time spring hits I will have all hives ready and nucs for the expansion process. This is going to be a sideline since I do work an average of 70 hours a week at a shipyard. But my thing is I keep busy do many things. I also cleared my two acres behind the house to put in a herb garden designed just for my bees. So many herbs that can be planted to maintain pollen and nectar almost year round.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

We will see what one can do. Like this forum everyone says u can't do treatment free but we do and it works and so far has worked great for my hives. I am just a fanatic to see what I can do when I get into something I enjoy. This is something I plan on doing for a long time. I will definitely keep everyone informed on my progress next year for I enjoy chatting with others on here even if only for a few.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

You work 70 hours a week and still find time to want to expand your bees, that's dedication!

I know timing is everything with bees as queens hatch at exact times and so on and so forth, when your capped queen cells are ready to emerge, will work allow you to be ready for the queens? I would hate to hear that your bees raised 20 queen cells only to have one emerge early and kill the others. 

I'm no expert, but I only work 40 hours a week and still find it hard to find time for my measly eight hives, and I haven't even got into serious queen rearing methods! 

I'm not putting you down, just wondering if you have a plan in place to be able to get out if your day job to take care of your sideliner ideas. And perhaps a back up plan? 

My plan for next spring is to split the hives that make it and then catch swarms to reach my goal of twenty hives, and make enough good splits to sell some nucs to help pay for some equipment. I would like to try and raise some queens for fun as well. 

I also plan on having a permanent yard within 10 minutes of my house instead of the current 40 minutes so I can be more attentive to them. 

I do wish you luck and hope you don't get burned out trying to keep up with your current job and expanding your bees!


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Thanks beeghost. Yes I do work a lot 12 hours a day and sometimes up to 59 days or nights before a day off. Luckily my job allows me some time to do what I enjoy even though I do work long hours and sometimes long months. Swing shift is good. I have always been a work-a-holic as my wife and parents would say. This year I have gotten a lot in place for next year like mentioned I cleared two acres which was fun and tilled it up by hand just to be ready to plant it in the spring to. I sometimes overdue it but always manage to accomplish what my goals are. It will take some planning when I start rearing my own queens to make sure they don't kill them all but I am pretty good with time. Work never stops even when one punch's the clock. Lol


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

One other thing is I work fifteen minutes from home and my apiary is at home. Everything I do is at my house except my full time job. If I could figure that one out I would be set. Another lol.


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## TooFarGone (Aug 19, 2012)

Beecrazy,
Here is a source of Buckfast queens - Randy Weaver in Navasota Tx.
http://www.rweaver.com/buck.php


Here is a source of Mite treatment free Buckfast hybrids - Beeweaver
http://www.beeweaver.com/beeweaverbuzz/buy_beeweaver/queens

They are located in a similar climate to you in S. Alabama. I nam new and do not know but, I was under the impression that you could not import queens or bees from outside of the USA. I don't know if this applies to Canada, but I do recall that they cannot import bees from us. Ck your PM's.

Tim


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

So, Beecrazy101, have you lit upon a plan? I'm an engineer, I'm all about the details.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Actually u can order queens from Canada. There is an inspection fee per queen that u import. To order two queens fro Canada the total price is a hefty $135 after shipping and inspection upon arrival to the states. You are thinking of Australia, New Zealand and other countries u can look up.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Solomon Parker said:


> So, Beecrazy101, have you lit upon a plan? I'm an engineer, I'm all about the details.


I will set down my detail plans on here in a few. I am working today and last night I was putting frames together and getting ready to build boxes.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Is R Weavers a treatment free queen rearing company? I would like to get a pure buckfast from a survivor stock. I am pretty sure that the ones from Canada r treatment free. Ferguson apiary.


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## EarleB (Jul 5, 2010)

I don't see why it is impossible, in fact I have a similar plan for the new year. Which is to take my 15 colonies to 50 or more before the end of 2013.

The idea is to start with three frame splits per colony, raise my own queens using the Hopkins method and feed them like hell, so I can produce another split within 3 months. If I do this 3 more times between now and the end of next year I could have more than 50 colonies.

Possibly by mid year I should be making splits from the first split I made in December or those colonies will be adding brood to my next splits for faster colony build up. 

I had done something similar to this earlier this year. Where grew 6 colonies to 15 just by splitting, feeding, and at that time I did it foundation-less (Had I equipment and foundation I would have done much better, however I didn't start until late February or was it March, not too certain). I even got a small harvest not so sure what will happen now that hurricane Sandy passed thru.


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

I went from 17 last year to 35 at present. The biggest obstacle was building and painting all the boxes, covers and bottom boards. Most of the increase I did from splits and swarm captures. For me, a critical component is a good local queen breeder. It's hard for queens to mate in SF weather. You may not have that problem where you are.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

Earl, that's no fair, you live in Jamaica mon! You have year round opportunities compared to most of us, I'm jealous! What you do in that climate will differ greatly compared to ours. We could split all we want, but unless there are drones around to mate the virgin queens, we will have our splits disappear due to unmated queens becoming drone layers. My hives don't have a single drone in them, at least from my observation.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

BeeGhost said:


> Earl, that's no fair, you live in Jamaica mon! You have year round opportunities compared to most of us, I'm jealous!


Perhaps you should appreciate the climate that you do have.  Its _Ian _in Manitoba that has a right to complain ...



Ian said:


> Here in Manitoba once winter falls we usually don't see temps on the plus side for months at a time. I'm putting mine in now, and they will not see the day of light for another 5 months.
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ng-in-northern-climates-on-a-commercial-scale


Ian is referring to storing his bees and hives _indoors _for 5 months during the winter.  How many times do you suppose he can split those hives each year?


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## gunter62 (Feb 13, 2011)

Don't forget the shb. My expansion attempt basically flopped this year due to the little buggers.

Small hives in shb country will need some help defending. I lost at least 5, and it happened fast. Just a reminder.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

Radar,

Just because I'm in CA doesn't mean the weather is always perfect, that would be So Cal that gets the good weather almost year round! Where I'm at it can get in the teens and sometimes snows but doesn't stick for long. No year round splitting here! 

And yes, Canada and the northern states have it worse than me and you!


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

You Canadians don't have to wear Ultra breeze suits like we do. I actually sweat through my veil in December. Not fair!


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## TooFarGone (Aug 19, 2012)

Beecrazy
All I "know" about Randy Weaver's Buckfast queens are what I read on his website- I didn't see anything about being treatment free - might be worth a call and ask. I looked up the Ferguson website in Canada- I don't see where they say that they are treatment free but their hygenic testing numbers are impressive.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Certainly feasible. I do better than that every summer with nucs. The biggest hurdle I see...do you have drawn comb, or will you be using foundation? I don't think it's possible if you have only foundation to give them.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

I do have comb drawn on all deeps and still having them draw comb to this day. Three deeps on three so far and two on another. I am getting ready with comb and boxes.


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## beecrazy101 (Jul 6, 2010)

Depending on next years expansion I am going to be looking into selling nucs the following year depending on how everything goes.


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

IMO you don't need drawn comb. I have split 10 strong hives into 75 with pierco plastic. They are mostly (90%) very strong doubles.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

RAK, 

Not doubting your accomplishment here but would like some details for personal reference on expansion.

Was that 10 to 75 in one year? 
How did you go about splitting them and did you already have mated queens?
How many gallons of syrup did you use in that time?
Did you wait until the nuc sized split filled a 10 frame single deep and split again or wait until they built out two deeps and split four ways?

Thanks!


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

Yes it took one year. The hives came out of the almonds so I picked the 10 strongest hives which some had 3 deeps packed with bees ready to swarm while others were about 20-25 frames of bees. The reason I did this is because I was testing to see if 10 to 100 hives is possible in one summer.

I constantly reared queen cells(with 3-5 more hives... so yeah I cheated(note:I reared drones too)) and took 6 frames of brood from each hive and made 2 frames nucs. A cell was placed into each nuc and then a week later another cell was placed again to insure that each nuc would have a good virgin. I still had av. 10-12% mating fail early spring but sometimes it went up to 30%. I then did this again. I did no syrup feeding because we had a VERY strong spring flow and summer. However I did toss some pollen sub here and there. Anyway I split a second time about 2 weeks later and did this till I had 80 hives with the starting ten. It takes 1.5-2 months(in a flow) to get a strong doubles from 2 frames. About nine-ten hives ended up being a fail by September. Some of these 2 frame splits swarmed in August during the peppermint bloom because they got extremely overpopulated. (I had to migrate the 80 hives 3 times to get the good flow) beats feeding. I started feeding large amount of sub end of August to have very strong hives goin to winter that way they should be strong for the Almonds. 

Going to 100 from 10 is probably possible, but I did not have enough time for all the splitting. You have to check if queens mated properly and always have to have queen cells on hand if the queen did not mate or else you will have nucs full of drone layers. The best mating I had this year was about 95% of 40 nucs(spare queens) I made. Buying queens will keep you from all the stress and is much easier to deal with.

I suggest that if your winters are warm the feed your bees Pollen sub constantly that way you could have very strong hives. Make sure you feeding 5lbs at a time not half a pound or else you won't see any good results.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

Thank you very much RAK for explaining how you did it, and you didn't cheat with the cell maker, you showed good management and how it is possible to grow exponentially from a few hives into many!


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

I agree with BG, very nice RAK, I'm impressed.


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## EarleB (Jul 5, 2010)

BeeGhost said:


> Earl, that's no fair, you live in Jamaica mon! You have year round opportunities compared to most of us, I'm jealous! What you do in that climate will differ greatly compared to ours. We could split all we want, but unless there are drones around to mate the virgin queens, we will have our splits disappear due to unmated queens becoming drone layers. My hives don't have a single drone in them, at least from my observation.


:shhhhon't tell any one you might spoil my girls fun. Seriously however even though our winters are warm we still have the death period and that can be very brutal, plus pollen flow varies according to season and location. While this dearth season ended early most times we have to feed from May to late August and sometimes September. 

So we do have to watch and time our splits for optimal queens.


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