# "Breeding for Increase"



## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

That would be my approach. I don't think anyone will disagree that the Italian bees are the most prolific when it comes to brood production on a consistent basis. They respond well to stimulative feeding and can turn that into brood probably better than any other bee lines available in the US.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

LBussy said:


> The concept of breeding for increase is a pretty common one, at least where I've been studying lately. I had an epiphany (maybe that's _too_ strong a word) while reading one of Br. Adam's books. When he discussed _fecundity_ he often ascribes the hyper-prolific Italian and Italian hybrids as being the far extreme end of the scale. The same is true of Roger Paterson and his general disdain for the "soft Eye-talians."
> 
> So here's my "epiphany:" If I am going to make an effort to _increase_ without any other goals for the year, would it make sense to build out my hives with my new boxes and frames with Italians just to get all of the hives established, then switch to whatever line I prefer?


I think that coould be effective; use the most prolific queens early in the season to get numbers up, then requeen later with a more suitable queen for wintering purposes in your locality. I see a down side if you allow them to produce a whack of drones; you might want to cull their drone brood till after requeening them.

If you are open mating in an area saturated with pollination oriented bees it would likely be rather ineffective. I brought in some Buckfast queens last summer so am playing around with shifting the genetics a bit in that direction but in my particular situation where I have a major effect on the local drone congregation I might actually be able to accomplish a little bit besides entertaining myself.


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## LarryBud (Jul 19, 2020)

I would ask what are your goals? I have Italian mutts and have had fairly good luck with honey production, hive proliferation and over wintering. If you establish with Italians-where do you want to go?


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

I would think it depends on when in spring you start, how many nucs or packages you intend to start with, if you intend to purchase queens for your increase, and the number of colonies you want going into winter. With proper feeding any geographical race of bee will build populations strong enough to make a midsummer split.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Unless I wanted to feed them it would not be much use to get my numbers up early because there is little forage here before June. Carni bees do a good job of holding off and I dont often have the problem of them getting locked on brood by a spring cold snap. My sons bees are more to the italian habits and that is more often an issue.I wouldnt dream of trading bees with him. I dont have a LOT of exposure to Italian bees but from what I have had, their bad manners and robbing habits make them a no go for me if I have the choice. That is probably painting them with too wide a brush though!

Probably Italians would not be as easy to manage in single deeps. Just guessing here, but University of Guelph is a big push on single deep broods and they are Buckfast breeders. Maybe there is a connection.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

Marcin said:


> They respond well to stimulative feeding and can turn that into brood probably better than any other bee lines available in the US.





crofter said:


> think that coould be effective; use the most prolific queens early in the season to get numbers up, then requeen later with a more suitable queen for wintering purposes in your locality.


I expected that this "hair-brained idea" would mean I would have to feed them heavily. I was more approaching this as a way to:

(most importantly) Be a comb-drawing factory to get me built-up (remember I am starting at zero)
Create a brood area suitable to support the insertion of the "new genetics"
Create field force for the collection of pollen to support #2
My napkin math (and with no knowledge of the local area into which I'll be moving) tell me I could do this till the end of July before I'd need to replace the queen with the desired genetics to hit the winter bees and then be my go-to for the following season. With luck and some hard work, I could build up a considerable yard the first year if that was my only goal.



crofter said:


> I see a down side if you allow them to produce a whack of drones; you might want to cull their drone brood till after requeening them.


My intent is to slap 1-2 green frames in there to cull the drones. That seems like a good approach from an IPM perspective as well as being able to avoid spillage of what might haunt me later.



crofter said:


> If you are open mating in an area saturated with pollination oriented bees it would likely be rather ineffective


I would not be the first year, this would just be to get going. That's why I posted another message yesterday trying to find out who is in the area that can help me get oriented to what suppliers might be available. Hopefully, I can find a few folks - and I'll keep cruising profiles to find folks who have filled out their locations. 



LarryBud said:


> I would ask what are your goals?


"Breeding for Increase," as the title says. 



AR Beekeeper said:


> I would think it depends on when in spring you start, how many nucs or packages you intend to start with, if you intend to purchase queens for your increase, and the number of colonies you want going into winter


Well, as soon as I can get a couple nucs, two, yes, as many as I can reasonably build up. I'd think with prolific queens, and the counting timer to get the new genetics in place before they start making winter bees, I could turn two hives into six or eight if I fed them steadily. Then if I could get 75% through the winter I could split a couple of those and produce honey with the others ... or wherever else I wanted to go with my hair-brained ideas.



crofter said:


> Probably Italians would not be as easy to manage in single deeps.


Around here, double-deeps seems to be the preferred method. That's taken on the whole without any knowledge of the lineage used.

And again, I was mostly hoping to get validation that what I believed was semi-on track. I've got MONTHS to change my mind again, and again, and again. Plus we still need to sell this house, get settled on the farm, build a house. 2022 is going to be busy.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

don't over think it1st
Your a 1st year to be beekeeper, most of your hives will likely be dead by the 1st spring, and almost cerntaly the next spring.. I wouldn't spend money on a new queen in the 1st year,


LBussy said:


> With luck and some hard work, I could build up a considerable yard the first year


and I would not focuse on building up a large yard, your not going to get there spliting packages started on foundation, and you need to spend some time overwintering full sized units before trying nucs. not saying you can't pull a split off a package started on foundation, most times you can, but thats one 

Genetics in a managed hive are tempory , and non standard they change form supplier to supplier... Ie the NZ Italians crofter has seen very likly have some difrances form CA ones pick up what ever is avaibuilty locally and run with it


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

msl said:


> Your a 1st year to be beekeeper, most of your hives will likely be dead by the 1st spring, and almost cerntaly the next spring.


I'll take that dare, sir! 

On the whole, that's fair but, but I have spent the past year learning from my (and others') mistakes in a teaching yard. I think that might give me a few extra percentage points.

I will absolutely share back in spring of 2023 how close to my prediction (or yours) that I am.


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

I would recommend starting with the genetics you think will work best for you taking into consideration your management style, goals, and climate. Then put them in Palmer style resource hives / double nucs (2 drawbacks with that system: bee space is a bit off, and swarm earlier than you expect i.e. with uncapped q cells). Have 3-4 stories availble for each. Start as early as you can (packages without comb would need to be after dandelions start). Then stay ahead of them and split regularly (lots of different ways). Overwinter them on 8-16 frames (2-4 stories). Combine any that are too small in September. Feed when needed. I dont know your flows but around here with proper timing you could get the numbers you are talking about with little suplemental feed. More feed would mean more splits / bigger colonies, and maybe more swarms. On a flow i have had these resource hives draw a deep frame enough to lay it full in less than 2 days. Then next year you can move some overwintered colonies into production equipment and maintain some resource hive for increase. I dont see much point in starting with genetics you dont want except that youd get the experience of hoe they respond to your situation.
If you were starting a dairy farm you would bit start with angus until you had built up your infrastructure. Bees are a bit different because you can replace the "ovaries and uterus" without replacing the cow but it still seams like a bit of a waste to me. Any bee will increase significantly.
Downside of resource hive is if you are too busy with your build they will be in the trees. Up side is you can use the equipment / system for many years to keep your apiary sustainable.
Good luck building your farm. Selling may be easy: Around here folks are paying top dollar, sight unseen, usually in less than a week. Building is a bit of a hassle. All contractors are busy, often not looking at new jobs. Matterials are often hard to find. (company in neighboring state is not even making the pipe i wanted for footing drains because they cant source materials.... Not backordered, thry have no idea when they will resume production....) Cheers


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## Zippy69 (Sep 5, 2021)

When I first started with 3 hives (supposed italians) I fed my bees like crazy, by years end I had 8 hives and 8 boxes of drawn comb on honey supers. I was in those hives watching every other day. Mid season I bought starline and buck fast queens for splits. My goal for the first year was to draw out comb and not even think about honey. Now mind you this was 22 years ago when life was easy….blah, blah. When my honey super was capped or drawn out with sugar honey I removed said supers and let it stand alone for a rob out. I think Italians are very prolific…but you will find variation in a group. If a colony draws amazing comb…pull bee less frames off and farm out to others. It’s micro managing but if you can for the first year or two your brood comb will be great. Just my one cent input.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

What LBussy is proposing does sound a bit on the ambitious and busy side for the first summer with bees but I have the feeling that he brings some parallel skills to the table. It is going to need a lot more besides just putting bees in a box and peeking at them once in a while. Feeding just to the brink of swarming and during any dearth and in smaller boxes can get a lot of comb drawn. With tight mite control and good wintering preps, 20 deep frames is not required to get smaller colonies thru the winter. Succeeding winters can use triple deeps as a tremendous resource for making nucs come spring. Good for making bees, but not from the get go.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

Amibusiness said:


> Then put them in Palmer style resource hives / double nucs


So I get that the basic idea here is the "shared heat" and the fact that bees seem to like (at least don't mind) the tall/narrow setup. What's the purpose of using the 10-frame box as the base? Is it just a good/sturdy foundation for the two nuc hives?

The challenge with this sort of configuration after splitting is I won't have a second yard to which I can bring the splits. I think I can get just a little over 1,200 feet in between two different areas (a relatively small farm) so I'd have to deal with drifting back home. That's where Patterson's method of making an increase seems to make sense, but there's no reason not to combine the two methods and start sliding those nucs together over a week or so.

I'm also using mediums, so lots of extra boxes compared to deeps, but eventually, I'll have enough. Maybe.

Patterson also promotes the "2-frame nuc" which is really a 5-frame but only a frame of brood and a frame of food + 3 "others." Making 4 nucs from a full 8-frame box is a pretty good split. If I can purchase a few queens locally until I figure out my own queen situation, maybe I'll be in good shape.



Amibusiness said:


> Selling may be easy: Around here folks are paying top dollar, sight unseen, usually in less than a week.


Seems to be the case here - fingers crossed.



Amibusiness said:


> Building is a bit of a hassle. All contractors are busy, often not looking at new jobs.


And .... there's the rub. 



Zippy69 said:


> It’s micro managing but if you can for the first year or two your brood comb will be great.


That's kinda what I was thinking - that I could get a crapton of frames drawn out and then that would give me the resources to turn around and expand quite a bit. Yes, I'd be investing in enough sugar to make the ATF wonder if I was a moonshiner, but I think it would beat buying a ton of nucs.



crofter said:


> 20 deep frames is not required to get smaller colonies thru the winter.


Good, because I'm going to have mediums.


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

I am talking deeps. If mediums your mmv. 5 frame nucs, 4-5 boxes high, can topple in winter need stabilization. I have not had that problem with resource hives. Another advantage is standard tops and running 2 queen production colonies, if your area supports that. The beauty of smaller colonies drawing comb is they are in buildup phase and draw more worker, less burr/drone comb. You could accomplish this with 5 frame nucs pushed together as well. When i have a resource hive that needs more room, early in the season, they go from
NBBB divider BBBN to 2 stories:
EEEB divider BEEE over
NBBE divider EBBN
I hope that makes sense. And they draw nice comb in center of brood nest (they treat the divider as the center). Dont split too agressively though or you will reduce the overall output.
We make most of our splits in the same yard. Just shake in a few extra nurse bees and know all the forragers will go home. Dont split too small until you have more experience.
What is your standard production equipment going to be? You may have said that elsewhere but I dont remember. Then we can give better / more detailed advice. I would caution against too much expansion first year: many folks get more discouraged when they have a loss after investing huge amounts of time and resources than thry would if they had spent less. I'd rather see you enjoy it and learn all you need to to be successful than get frustrated and throw in the towel! A few splits is great, but maybe better to plan major expansion after your first year experiences....


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

Amibusiness said:


> When i have a resource hive that needs more room, early in the season, they go from
> NBBB divider BBBN to 2 stories:
> EEEB divider BEEE over
> NBBE divider EBBN
> I hope that makes sense.


Mostly? I am not following what "N" is, "E" I assume is "Empty?" I get the general idea though.



Amibusiness said:


> We make most of our splits in the same yard. Just shake in a few extra nurse bees and know all the forragers will go home.


The method Patterson uses to hatch new queens is sealed brood to make the split. He says they need fewer bees to keep them warm. Then the foragers from the original colony populate the two nucs. Then about the time the queen is ready to start laying, she has newly hatched nurse bees to tend to it. I think his thought is that having mostly foragers at first will help backfill the empty frames and about the time everyone is ready to get down to business there's plenty of brood food. Plus you are only really removing a frame of brood and nurses from the donor hive which is pretty quick to recover.

One thing is for sure - I'll need to stick with a plan and not go off two or three different scripts. 



Amibusiness said:


> What is your standard production equipment going to be?


8F mediums. I realize the Palmer method with the resource hive is attractive because you can use standard covers. About the only way I could pull that off is to use special boxes with thin Luan on one side. That might not be a good thing if one side or the other were taller going into Winter.



Amibusiness said:


> I would caution against too much expansion first year: many folks get more discouraged when they have a loss after investing huge amounts of time and resources than thry would if they had spent less.


I get that. A lot of this is me just kicking things around to make sure I'm understanding things as I learn about them. A lot next year will hinge on when I actually move. I can start hives there no matter what, but the ability to micro-manage them will only come when we move and I am not sure when that will be. It's all about the housing market.

At some point, I'm going to be standing there with a hive tool and smoker in hand, and I'll say to my self "heck with it, let's do it" and all this will be my basis for execution. I appreciate you folks discussing it with me.


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

N is nectar. I dont worry about foragers on split because i can put nectar in it or feed it. By the time the new queen is laying some bees have aged so can gather pollen. Though sub could be used as well.
I have 1 yard with 8f mediums. To begin with i just used that to split, no special equip. (I did this because i have several customers who only run med and i wanted to be able to supply them nucs and know what the management is like.) I now also use 3/3/3 med queen castles there (which is cheating because they are 10 f size) because it gets more queens with fewer resources. Then when needed i expand them into 8f equip for overwintering. I dont like the management because it is more work (i need to select 1/3 more frames for splits, 2x as many boxes, extracting mediums takes longer per #, ...). Also interior bee space is off so there is more likelihood of burr on side. And the production colonies get noticeably taller (i could mitigate this by extracting more often but am not always able to do that). Brood can be 3-4 boxes and honey often 7, sometimes 10. Dont build your stands too high.... I do like that they are light and manageable. So I could imagine when i am paying too much to my chiropractor i may switch to them. Initial cost is more as well, and over time there is a bit more equipment to maintain/replace, but that is still far cheaper than back surgery so may not be a factor.
I tried 5 frame mediums but they dont seem to overwinter as well and are still more work. In a pinch, if the colony does not have enough time to build out, i would still use them; or when i run out of equipment. But they are the last equipment i grab.
Also, the medium castles are great setting up but can be annoying to move in to other equip when they need more room (for overwintering). So for queen sales i like them but for nuc production i like the resource hive because only the ones i keep to replace production colonies need to be moved into dif equip. Sometimes i reverse and the resource hives are not conducive to that.
For 8f med i would suggest making follower boards with solid bb for splits and do one per box (with boxes touching if you think there is advantage to that). You can over winter in 2-4 boxes, i expect. (We sometimes overeinter good looking 8f med in singles and they do very well, but if not up to par they get combined.) i hope this helps!


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

Amibusiness said:


> honey often 7, sometimes 10.


That sounds like a first-world problem. 

While I am not counting on honey for my first year, I am positively drooling thinking about the cut comb honey. If that's not perfection I don't know what is.



Amibusiness said:


> Initial cost is more as well, and over time there is a bit more equipment to maintain/replace, but that is still far cheaper than back surgery so may not be a factor.


I've had back and neck surgery already. While I feel pretty good now, the choice of 8f-mediums is certainly at least in part based on my fervent desire not to do that again. Not to mention I'll be out of pocket for it after retirement (at least in part,) so let's avoid that, shall we?

I've already purchased three hives worth of woodenware, along with a couple of five-frame boxes with top and bottoms. From here, in theory, the expense will be more spread out - relatively anyway.



Amibusiness said:


> For 8f med i would suggest making follower boards with solid bb for splits and do one per box


You may have lost me here. "bb?" Bead board? I feel like an idiot today as this is the second time I've asked you to explain. 

So the follower board - I would put 5 frames in an 8, add the sixth frame, and then the follower board to squeeze the free space a bit? Or do you mean 2 x 4 frames in a box, and then stack another similar one on top?



Amibusiness said:


> We sometimes overeinter good looking 8f med in singles and they do very well, but if not up to par they get combined.


I was thinking I could stack with something like a Snellgrove board to allow multiple hives to share some heat. Of course, that would also mean 1_n_ entrances to lose heat, and let's not have that argument here.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I would not put a lot of value in the shared heat idea if it involves stacking. Heat rises. Better to share side to side. Easier access for inspection and or feeding. Top insulation is easy and cheap and most effective. Far easier to cut a 16 1/4 X 20 sheet of foam than to make a double screen board.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

crofter said:


> I would not put a lot of value in the shared heat idea if it involves stacking.


Understood. I was just thinking if I had two otherwise relatively strong colonies in 8 frames, I could stack them. Of course, you're probably thinking I should combine them and split them in the spring. Amirite?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

LBussy said:


> That's kinda what I was thinking - that I could get a crapton of frames drawn out and then that would give me the resources to turn around and expand quite a bit. Yes, I'd be investing in enough sugar to make the ATF wonder if I was a moonshiner, but I think it would beat buying a ton of nucs.



You are assuming that by simply feeding the colonies they will continue to draw out comb. Doesn't always work that way, and in my experience, there is a portion of the season where it rarely works that way. What happens in the real world which none of your reading shows, there comes a point where the bees will take all that feed, backfill the brood nest, then leave in a swarm. In our experience, the most effective way to prevent the backfill and swarm behaviour that comes naturally to the bees, give them a box of empty comb. Note, I wrote 'empty comb', not 'brand new frames to draw out'.

I think there is a reason most of the time on forums when you read about folks having swarms and complaining about them, it's newish beekeepers. In the vast majority of cases, they read online that 'feed the bees, they will draw more comb', so they overfeed the bees and triggered swarms. Been there, done that, over a decade ago.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

LBussy said:


> Understood. I was just thinking if I had two otherwise relatively strong colonies in 8 frames, I could stack them. Of course, you're probably thinking I should combine them and split them in the spring. Amirite?


That was not my thought but better one strong than two dead. I think Pedersen apiaries in Manitoba experimented with sharing heat vertically and did not find it good. This was with a closed inner cover in between if I remember correctly. Using screen between allows escape of too much of the heat from lower colony. I think Michael Bush tried it and gave a thumbs down but due to moisture issues. The four frame over four frame colonies placed side by side do well. Amibusiness mentions this. I have used a few of these setups. Idea from Michael Palmer! 
Vertical height of stores in winter much more efficient than width.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

grozzie2 said:


> What happens in the real world which none of your reading shows


I can read and converse this winter, I can't keep bees. Should I stop reading and talking to people?



grozzie2 said:


> there comes a point where the bees will take all that feed, backfill the brood nest, then leave in a swarm. In the vast majority of cases, they read online that 'feed the bees, they will draw more comb', so they overfeed the bees and triggered swarms.


To avoid swarms I need to split. If I want to split, I need to get drawn comb. It's a vicious cycle for a new beekeeper.

I did exchange emails with Dr. Seeley asking if I could do an artificial swarm as he talks about in his books and use that as a "split" to start drawing comb like a natural swarm. He shared the following (some editing to make a coherent flow from several emails):



Dr Tom Seeley said:


> Providing a can of syrup does not cause the bees in a package to get engorged, it just keeps them alive. [...] It takes a lot more than a can of syrup to get a 3-lb package of bees as engorged as swarm bees. [...] The bees should be primed to build comb if fed heavily for 2-3 days. [...] You will need to put your split into a hive several miles from their original hive, otherwise many of them will move back into it. [...] Just feed the bees a 50-50 (by volume) of sucrose and water, and make sure you keep feeding them until they are taking no more. Do this for 3 days, to give time for their wax glands to activate.


So I guess the answer to making sure they actually draw comb reliably is to remove ALL of their comb. Of course, I don't have yards separated by miles, so I may have to get creative. That or keep my eyes peeled for people selling out of used equipment, but then I have the unknown factor, not knowing what's in the comb.



crofter said:


> The four frame over four frame colonies placed side by side do well. Amibusiness mentions this. I have used a few of these setups. Idea from Michael Palmer!


So I guess I'm back to a 10-frame base and 4-frame "supers." If I want to use my existing 8-frame tops and such, I could have 3 frames and a follower board on the outside, to 3 on one side and 4 on the other, alternating. That would still keep the sides separate, but at least allow the volume to be the same.

Sound half-baked much? I guess using some 10-frame equipment won't kill me. I actually do have some.



crofter said:


> Vertical height of stores in winter much more efficient than width.


I guess the narrower hive allows them to move up and consume all the stores without bypassing a bunch on the sides?


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

10 frame equipment does not need to get heavy when you are raising bees to gain hive count. For making a bunch of boxes for stacking, look @ Msl recent post on using OSB. Short term bottom and top boards can be simply constructed, in fact there was a post showing an interchangeable design. Forget about those fancy designer garden hives for virtue signalling. You need some of Greg's guidance on quick and dirty bee housing. 😜


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

LBussy said:


> So I guess the answer to making sure they actually draw comb reliably is to remove ALL of their comb. Of course, I don't have yards separated by miles, so I may have to get creative.


yep, what draws combs like no outer. swarms 

The fly back split is a power house for comb drawing and a great option for fokes who only have one yard, instead of fighting the bees flying back to the old location, you count on it.. Its a great post flow split as well as it allows you strip a hive of it's feild force (bees that are just going to sit around, eat honey and die before winter) and cause them to revert to nurse bees, draw comb and raise brood for you


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## Jim Braun (Nov 8, 2019)

I'm mid way between St Louis and Columbia, Mo. Let me give you an example of the two 2nd and 3rd year beekeepers that I've been helping out this year. Both bought packages that they put into 10 frame deeps. They were most likely Italian queens because they all filled out 2 deeps and 1 super. All 4 of them died the first winter. 1 bought 2 more packages this year and they both took off well and built out lots of frames but 1 just died a few weeks ago and the other 1 may make it through the winter but I doubt it as it's mite count was 25 per 300 bees. I give it a 20% chance of making it through January and February. She got a swarm from a few miles away that will probably make it through the winter.

The 2nd beekeepers bought 2 full hives from near Shelbina, Mo. When I met them the bees were heavily infested with varroa in April. We did 2 cut outs and caught 1 swarm from my little town of Bellflower. They bought some queens and now they have 5 hive that should make it through January and February as they have good numbers and more to the point had 0 mites per 300 bees on 2 and 1 mite per 300 bees on 3 hives.

With that backstory I would strongly suggest that you buy 2 nucs from a successful beekeeper beekeeper near you. I would go for mutts or Carniolans. Shoot for having your bees make it through the first winter. That means treating for mites especially.

By the way you wondered what bb meant in post 17 and I read that as bottom board, not bead board.

What kind of info are you looking for in suppliers?

Good Luck and I hope all of your research helps you with your bees.


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

Yep bb=bottom board
No in 8f med i would do 3-8 frame split w queen cell or mated q (depending on season and goal) with follower board if 5 frames or less, and empty frames (no/1 foundation) if more. Often they dont draw comb until she's laying. Then move folower board, add boxes, and/or feed as needed.
I would not try to do multiple colonies per 8f med unless you are trying to sell queens


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

Amibusiness said:


> Yep bb=bottom board


That makes more sense, thank you.



msl said:


> yep, what draws combs like no outer. swarms. The fly back split is a power house for comb drawing and a great option for fokes who only have one yard, instead of fighting the bees flying back to the old location, you count on it.


Okay, I went and searched fly-back split and found a post by Ray Marler and another one by Lauri that are slightly different but pretty close. They both split to prevent swarms and of course, get them drawing comb again. This looks pretty much like what Patterson explains but in reverse. So there's a plan, we'll see. With new nucs this year I may not have a chance to do that but next year if I keep them alive it sounds like a good idea.

I'll still need to figure out the queens - either be okay with a walk-away or buy some or use one of the other methods to get some cells going.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

You gain a lot of production time if you buy mated laying queens. Walk aways or Snelgrove splits and other queen producing methods have no guarantee of success, besides the time delay to first brood. If mainly looking to increase numbers you dont have to invest in expensive pedigreed queens. 
That said, it does not prevent you from dabbling in some parallel homemade queen production.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

I'll be happy with mutts for sure. I was thinking about something that could allow me "some" cells without a huge time investment (and without straining my eyes.) A cell punch approach might work if I get some wax foundation or foundationless comb.

I would feel wasteful if I had a whole line of queen cells and nowhere to put them. I know, I may be getting ahead of myself there, but there's no harm in being optimistic.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

There are ways of getting some cells with no investment for gear. There is a $20. way around the eye strain issue too but that is for another thread. I had more queens than I needed this past season. Sure is nice to grab the genitics of a promising queen without getting her to lay on comb you can punch cells from but that is for another thread.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LBussy said:


> To avoid swarms I need to split. If I want to split, I need to get drawn comb. It's a vicious cycle for a new beekeeper.


You don't need drawn comb.
It is a myth build upon the ongoing conventions.
Drawn comb is desirable, but not at all necessary.

Think - do the swarms take along drawn comb?
Certainly not. 

All you have to do - shook swarms. 
It works.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

GregV said:


> You don't need drawn comb.
> It is a myth build upon the ongoing conventions.
> Drawn comb is desirable, but not at all necessary.
> 
> ...


LBussy;

Further to what Greg says, do a google on Taranov Swarm. I have used it a few times and it works slick. The demographic split is not entirely like a swarm but will head off a swarm and leave the hive with all the foragers. I have used it to segregate and locate the queen (when I could not find her) for a Snelgrove split. If you are managing for increase you may not have a big issue with swarming.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

crofter said:


> Do a google on Taranov Swarm. I have used it a few times and it works slick. The demographic split is not entirely like a swarm but will head off a swarm and leave the hive with all the foragers.


I'd read about that before and it seems more "fiddly" without a demonstrable advantage. If I were to paraphrase it, it's "dump everything out and wait for the queen and nurse bees to cluster." If that's right, how is it different than a fly-back split? The only advantage I can see to it in this context (with all of my years of experience) is being able to definitively know the queen is in this ball right here, and possibly being able to start over with zero foundation (maybe to lose infected comb?)

Or am I missing something?


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

The queen is with different age group with a Taranov compared to a flyback. Some use when you cant find the queen or not sure if more than one queen present. A large colony of dark bees with an elusive queen is maddening. Some people will shake every bee thru a shaker box too. I have found it useful but there are other ways.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LBussy said:


> If I were to paraphrase it, it's "dump everything out and wait for the queen and nurse bees to cluster." If that's right, how is it different than a fly-back split?


Fly back - must have the queen found. The queen stays at the original spot.
Dump everything - no queen found. Queen moved away.


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

Don't do walk aways if you want increase, it's a major waste of resources


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

depends on the size of the walk away


> split into 48 nucleus hives of various volumes: two comb "box hive" (3 liters), four comb "box hive" (6 liters), two frame Langstroth (8.4 liters), four frame Langstroth (16.8 liters).







__





Final report for FNE20-964 - SARE Grant Management System







projects.sare.org




but yes, the "classic" take the top deep of, set on a new bottom walk away costs you a packages worth of bees vs installing a mated queen and you only have a 2/3s or so chance of getting a laying queen,




GregV said:


> Fly back - must have the queen found. The queen stays at the original spot.


In the common way yes,
but in light of the above research (Treatment d2 “Run-away” split- moving a large hive in the yard and moving back open brood to catch the field force. ) Sam comfort is suggesting doing it queenless, my own experience has show it can work quite well..... I moved the queen, people at the class watched me move the queen... but come back and the flyback split has drawn cells, AND the mother hive was queen right with a marked queen  ..........bees will be bees I guess.😝
worth noteing that group D had the best body morphometrics of all the walk aways!!

fokes here who know me are likely now connecting the dots, and some "odd" things on the OSB nuc I posted are starting to make sense.. it alows newbeeks to pull 2 small doolittle's and pack it with the forage force


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

crofter said:


> What LBussy is proposing does sound a bit on the ambitious and busy side for the first summer with bees but I have the feeling that he brings some parallel skills to the table.


I wanted to come back to this one because I thought about it this morning. What I "bring" is listening to you guys. I hope you all know how much I appreciate you sharing your experience with me!



GregV said:


> Fly back - must have the queen found. The queen stays at the original spot.
> Dump everything - no queen found. Queen moved away.


That makes sense. I was listening to another Roger Patterson video and he was relating an anecdote about a 30+ year "beekeeper" that had never found his queens. I guess there's nothing wrong with that when it works, but I'm not quite sure how people can help themselves from finding the old gal. It's like "Where's Waldo" with everything moving. Maybe I'm just competitive that way?



Amibusiness said:


> Don't do walk aways if you want increase, it's a major waste of resources


I'm beginning to realize that. I guess that saying "you can make bees or you can make honey" is true in that case, anyway. I did a little math:

15 to 17 days for the queen to emerge
10 to 14 days for the queen to mate and start laying
19 to 21 days for new workers to emerge
18 to 21 days for new workers to become field bees
If that's right, it's 59 - 80 days to get new field workers from a walkway. That's crazy! The same I guess with any "emergency" queen replacement the bees would do. I realize that some of the existing bees will "re-align" as needed, but it's still a stagnant colony until day 42 - 52 when new workers emerge. If there are 184 days in a "season" (figuring March 15 through September 15 just for comparison purposes) that's 32% to 44% of the season waiting for the colony to recover from an "easy split."

Okay, color me convinced. Crossing that one off now.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LBussy said:


> but I'm not quite sure how people can help themselves from finding the old gal.


In one of my hives I have never found the queen yet since she was born in June 2021 - this one "#3 - daughter of VSH survivor queen".
She is most likely of the "tiger" type or black, and is probably runny; this combined with the feisty bees and a large, runny colony makes finding some queens not so trivial. I did try.
In some other hives no matter what I do - I see the queen every time.
So it depends. 
You should try it.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

msl said:


> but in light of the above research (Treatment d2 “Run-away” split- moving a large hive in the yard and moving back open brood to catch the field force. ) Sam comfort is suggesting doing it queenless, my own experience has show it can work quite well [...] fokes here who know me are likely now connecting the dots, and some "odd" things on the OSB nuc I posted are starting to make sense.. it alows newbeeks to pull 2 small doolittle's and pack it with the forage force


And for folks that do not? Can you shed more light on this for me pretty please? Or is that basically what I was asking about at first? Sam Comfort is that guy who uses skewers for mating nucs, right?



GregV said:


> You should try it.


I have, for the last several months, across five hives + time with a mentor. I'm not saying I've found her every time, but it's better than nothing.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LBussy said:


> I have, for the last several months, across five hives + time with a mentor. I'm not saying I've found her every time, but it's better than nothing.


Good.
Now you should play with semi-feral bees and see how that goes.
The common commercial bees (Italian-variants) are very easy - those lazy moving, huge, red queens are easy to pick-off even being legally blind.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

GregV said:


> Now you should play with semi-feral bees and see how that goes.


Here's hoping I get a chance.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

LBussy said:


> that's 32% to 44% of the season waiting for the colony to recover from an "easy split."


yep, and that's why its common to import queens for early splits and why walk aways will often not make a crop.. The same issue happens with local queens/rearing your own. The time spent waiting for your queens to be ready and then split is just as big a loss as spliting and then waiting

the way one can get a head is with smaller splits and muti queen hives, leveraging the fact that past 4 frames of bees the hive grows as (more or less) the same rate


> Spring Splits
> Its important to understand how they grow so you can fine tune your management A bee population grows linearly as the limiting factor is the queens laying rate (vs mites that grow exponentially)
> Past 4 frame of bees its a net gain of about 550 bees a day or about 2 frames of bees a week.. ( while the queen may be laying 1500 eggs a day, remember the old bees are dying)
> 
> ...


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

Or split at the tail end of your flow (if you already have comb) and leave in same yard. Foragers will finish the crop and you can overwinter nucs for next year


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

I think I understood Patterson as saying one could bring in sealed brood to the splits/nucs, and as that hatched out, rotate another comb in. In that way, the previous queen can continue to keep her page while the new queen is "cooking."


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## bobo (Feb 15, 2015)

I'm enjoying your thread LBussy and the feedback.
I think you meant 'sealed brood' (not sealed comb). 
Palmer not only uses nucs as brood factories, but also for comb drawing. They seem to draw faster than regular 8F or 10F colonies.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

bobo said:


> I think you meant 'sealed brood' (not sealed comb).


I have no idea what you are talking about. _blink_ 



bobo said:


> Palmer not only uses nucs as brood factories, but also for comb drawing. They seem to draw faster than regular 8F or 10F colonies.


I am beginning to wrap my brain around that whole "factory" thing. While this past year we moved some stuff and did combines, I was looking at the colony as inviolate. Using these small "factories" is a mind-blower. _So long as I have queens_ I have the means to build up every colony I have through management. I know you guys know this, but I think it's just starting to sink in.

While talking with one of the master beekeepers around here he mentioned the "queen rearing season" here (greater Kansas City area) is very narrow. I'm not sure what he meant by that now, so I need to get more of his time and ask him to explain. I suspect he did the first time he told me that but I was not prepared to understand it. I think there's actually a club meeting tonight, so I'll try to get a moment of his time then.

It may be because I've read/watched so much Patterson, but I want to be able to use my own queens. They will be mutts, I might get some issues, but it's about sustainability in my mind. I think it was a post by Crofter, maybe Oldtimer, in which he just cut a strip of comb into one cell wide strips, mounted that on the top bar, poked a few cells out in between to make space, and let the bees do their thing. I love how that really reduced "queen rearing" down to its most basic form. It removed darned near any excuse a person could give.

So, maybe, I can rear some queens (this seems adventurous for my first year) and have some nucs going and keep them overwinter. Then I use those queens for splits and go from there. But that's a several year project if you think about it:

Year one: Hives (for the sake of argument let's say two) alive and overwinter sucessfully
Spring of year two: Splits with queens obtained "somewhere"
Summer of year two: Might be a bad time, need to find out, but maybe raise some queens
Finish year two with _four _colonies plus my new queens (will need to put more thought into the various systems such as Palmer)
Spring of year three: Splits with my very own queens
How's it, sound guys? Do you have faith in me or are you laughing in your coffee?


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## bobo (Feb 15, 2015)

LBussy - you may find of interest this video Mike Palmer's The Sustainable Apiary. Presented to beekeepers in Great Britain. 



It is here that Mike speaks of using nucs not only for adding brood to colonies, but to draw foundation.
Hope you enjoy it.
Bob
It's well to remember that all beekeeping is local, and although principles are transferrable, each locale will present its own characteristics and vagaries of management.


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

If you start with late packages your timeline is good. If you start with overwintered nucs you may (likely) get swarm cells and can easily make splits during swarm season with your own queens. Or just buy a few queens first year, then you will have more to select from if you overwinter successfully. (According to Binnie swarm queens aren't so bad....) For me, honey is work, making bees is fun.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LBussy said:


> Do you have faith in me or are you laughing in your coffee?


Pretty soon you will need to decide what is your niche.
One of the common niches is the backyard beeks with 3-4 hives that are trying to emulate the commercial methods.
That makes me laugh, indeed.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

This last plan sounds a bit tamer. Really I dont think it so important to make huge gain in hive count initially. When you are ready to bust out and confident of not wasting your money, then it is not hard to buy a bunch of nucs and go at it. If you can keep them alive it is not an expenditure but an investment. Way less angst!

I agree with @Amibusiness about making bees more fun than honey. All the many steps, between pulling it off till it rings the cash register, can start to get old after the novelty wears off.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

bobo said:


> LBussy - you may find of interest this video Mike Palmer's The Sustainable Apiary. Presented to beekeepers in Great Britain.


I have watched that a few times. Each time I learn something else I go back and listen again with better context. I dig the headline, I'm just getting to where I understand more about the story.



Amibusiness said:


> If you start with late packages your timeline is good.


That's where I will be this coming year. Local supplier, two strong 5 or 8-frame nucs (8 is almost a colony), and one Buckfast because I just can't give up on wanting to see what it's all about. The other queen is unknown right now but I trust the supplier (I've worked in his yard as well.) I'm tracking on the potential issues with breeding queens off the Buckfast.



GregV said:


> Pretty soon you will need to decide what is your niche.


Probably. However, I want to know about all of it, which will make me better overall.



crofter said:


> Really I dont think it so important to make huge gain in hive count initially.


Two things go into that:

I do have a plan in mind for 10 years from now (like Mike Tyson says: "Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face") that requires I be expanded by then.
Being able to do this will prove I am being effective at keeping bees alive, healthy, and well-managed



crofter said:


> All the many steps, between pulling it off till it rings the cash register, can start to get old after the novelty wears off.


I appreciate that. This is how I approach things, and I need to keep pulling at threads till I have a good handle. In the US there's no "native and near-native honeybee" that we are endeavoring to protect. We're not an island, as a matter of fact, we can't even manage a border.  BUT, being able to act as if I was alone on a desert island and still make an increase will be my meter, telling me whether or not I have a handle on things. Whether there's a viable way to use it and "keep up" is separate.

I _am_ listening to all of you, and I love your contributions. I fully expect that I will find it's unreasonable for me to scale all of these efforts at the same time. I'm just enjoying poking at it.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LBussy said:


> Probably. However, *I want to know about all of it*, which will make me better overall...........


Ok then.
Laughing in my coffee now.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

GregV said:


> Ok then.
> Laughing in my coffee now.


I'm sure the folks you are mentoring are _totally _better off with cynicism.

"Know it all" != "Know about all of it."


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LBussy said:


> I'm sure the folks you are mentoring are _totally _better off with cynicism.
> 
> "Know it all" != "Know about all of it."


LBussy, you are in IT and should know very well - once you know the MS tech even a little (enough to make living), it is really not worthwhile to try being an expert in Oracle tech too (just ain't enough time in your life). 
I gave up long ago. 
I can not even keep track of MS noise anymore - too much.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

I know about Microsoft, Linux, containers, Oracle, MySQL, DB/2, C, C++, Fortran, COBOL, Java, Ada (you get the idea) ..... and at various times I have been an expert in those. Without having conversational knowledge, based on some experience, I would be a less effective leader. No, I cannot be an expert in all of them all the time, but I sure know more than nothing, and I can lead operations spanning those areas. That's the type of "know _about_ all of it" I am talking about.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Barring "black swans" there should be no question about being able to make gains. As long as there is forage potential not already oversubscribed increase should be a given. That is providing you are not still entertaining the notion of doing it without active mite control. It would be hard to raise capital on that. If you dont have money to throw at it and it must pull itself up by its bootstraps and hard labor, you may find out that the wage earned may not sustain your enthusiasm. I think that is one of the bigger deal breakers: Humans are notoriously bad at predicting how they are going to feel about things some where in the future. I put a bit of parallel in comparing being in a hurry to get married!

Live together with the bees for a while before you throw a big lavish wedding😜


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

Honestly LB, I don't know how you find the time to research all this. You have enough knowledge and experience and have made enough decisions to get started. Some things you have thought a lot about will turn out to be irrelevant in your operation and some things that have not come up with yet will need answers (from this forum?) when you have your bees in front of you. If you want to do more research, read the old books, watch the good(!) vids, and dream. I don't think you are in a position to make long-term plans around this yet. First year plans sound fine. Next winter plan for coming year. The following winter you may have enough under your belt to begin long-term plans.... If they thrive the second winter. (Notice the treatment free bees are sold as "hardy" and "survivor stock" not "thrive and make a killing" stock.)


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## susan.saarinen1 (Nov 18, 2021)

crofter said:


> I think that coould be effective; use the most prolific queens early in the season to get numbers up, then requeen later with a more suitable queen for wintering purposes in your locality. I see a down side if you allow them to produce a whack of drones; you might want to cull their drone brood till after requeening them.
> 
> If you are open mating in an area saturated with pollination oriented bees it would likely be rather ineffective. I brought in some Buckfast queens last summer so am playing around with shifting the genetics a bit in that direction but in my particular situation where I have a major effect on the local drone congregation I might actually be able to accomplish a little bit besides entertaining myself.


 Has anyone read Thomas Seeley's "The Lives of bees"? It is an excellent study of how bees live in nature and might inform some of the decisions we bee keepers make. It certainly has given me cuase to think.


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## susan.saarinen1 (Nov 18, 2021)

susan.saarinen1 said:


> Has anyone read Thomas Seeley's "The Lives of bees"? It is an excellent study of how bees live in nature and might inform some of the decisions we bee keepers make. It certainly has given me cuase to think.


One thing I'll keep in mind is the number of bees hives in one area. The other is monocultures.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

crofter said:


> As long as there is forage potential not already oversubscribed increase should be a given.


This is something I really wonder about myself. I "know" that there used to be a commercial honey producer that had "several hundred" hives on his farm a few miles from where I will be. He was on a near-full section so he had room for many yards. I also know he's passed, and his family sold off those assets. I might be able to infer from that the area is at least okay for forage, despite the agriculture. I guess I'll see what the girls find.



crofter said:


> That is providing you are not still entertaining the notion of doing it without active mite control.


Well, I want to be clear about that. I think anyway that I said I hope to be, but I mean that in the same sense that anyone should mean it: The experiment is not to see if the bees will live without treatments, it's to see if the bees and other circumstances combine to keep varroa levels low. If they do not, then I will treat them. "I want to not need treatment" is how I would put it. I have to assume most folks would agree with that.



crofter said:


> I think that is one of the bigger deal breakers: Humans are notoriously bad at predicting how they are going to feel about things some where in the future.


I am pretty pragmatic about what will catch and hold my interest. My run rate is about 10% so _some_ of this will stick, not all of it. I just want to experiment with all of it so I pick the best 10%. 



crofter said:


> I put a bit of parallel in comparing being in a hurry to get married!


Dude, I've been married four times. You hit the nail squarely on the head there!



Amibusiness said:


> Honestly LB, I don't know how you find the time to research all this.


When I am interested in something I learn about that as my recreation. So let's take a 24-hour period: Eight hours sleeping, eight hours work, eight hours to split between showering and everything else that I can do at the same time I am studying. Even if I only study half that time, that comes to 28 hours a week reading or watching (good!) videos. Even when I am on the treadmill, driving, running, whatever, podcasts, YouTube and other sources keep me thinking. I work from home now, and my days are spent on bridges listening to people who have no idea what's going on. While they figure it out I read my email and reply here, with maybe a few Google searches thrown in.



Amibusiness said:


> You have enough knowledge and experience and have made enough decisions to get started.


I think so too, given all the new people who buy a package of bees and maybe grab a pamphlet on the way home as an afterthought. But it's _November_ and there's not much else I can do but read and ask questions to firm up my comprehension. If you have a better way for me to learn right now, I'm all ears (eyes.)

Guys (and gals,) I'm _excited_ to get going. If I'm irritating you, don't answer me. If you do want to help I listen to every bit of what you tell me and insert it into the wall of knowledge I am accumulating.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I dont think you really need to _experiment with all of it. _The bees are still bees no matter what kind of economic plan you are following. That is the part that you must have down reasonably well. Your inclinations and abilities as to merchandizing, promoting, speaking engagements, beekeeping messiah , relaxing hobby, challenge of accomplishment, building equipement etc., could be all over the map and you should know those parameters better than we would. Those angles could well change on your journey or you might even come to think a totally different endeavor would better scratch the itch that beekeeping promises at the moment.

That is all an aside from the need to have a good handle on the basics of beekeeping and a lot of knowing what the variables may be due to local conditions. I think the latter may be some of the hardest because a lot of that information is contained in quite a bit of heritage methods, folklore and seeming contradictions and compounded by different responses of the various bee breeds. It has to be vetted by experience rather than discerned by pure logic and physics. Sure a different operating system than computers. Not an easy thing to fast forward merely by the application of intense concentration.

You obviously enjoy contemplation so you have some entertainment ahead of you .


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

crofter said:


> Sure a different operating system than computers. Not an easy thing to fast forward merely by the application of intense concentration.


But ... I clicked the "buy it now" button. I want it noooooooooooooowwww!!!


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