# Splitting hives for profit



## leejones15 (Apr 4, 2015)

I put in my first year as a learning beek (I'm still learning ,and will continue to do so) and am ready to start prepping to turn it into a side business. I am a high school teacher with summers off and a steady income, so the business I'm hoping to go with won't be too big to handle beyond summers and weekends/evenings, and doesn't need to make a full-time livable income, just enough to supplement my teacher salary.
My current plan is to focus on hive products (honey, propolis, cut-comb, lip balm, etc) that I will sell online and at farmers markets. Living in Oregon, there seems to be a good market for local and natural products. 
But, my question is about splitting hives and making nucs. Also popular in Oregon is backyard beekeeping, and so I am thinking about doing some spring splits, both for my own growth, and to sell the extra nucs to fellow beeks. My question is what effect will this have on honey production? If I have a double deep 8-frame hive (and a couple 10s), how many splits (walk-away or MDA) can I do without weakening the hive to the point of little or no honey production? If I completely divide the hive (16 frames split 4 ways, to make 4 new hives) is that colony going to spend all season building up to full size and never gather any excess honey? Should I skip the nucs and stick to honey?
Thanks!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

If you want to do both, raise bees and honey, and sell both, I would dedicate half of the hives to splits and the other half to honey. Trying to do both and have them early enough to sell is not very practical. You can do both a bit later in the year (two weeks before the flow) by doing a cut down split, but that requires good timing, strong hives and your splits won't be as early as most seem to want to buy their nucs.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#cutdown


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

You can do both-raise bees and honey but need to learn how to 
-prepare hive for winter as in mitigating mites, fall feeding, lower and upper entrances of appropriate size, mouse quards, add feed rim, ?quilt box, insulate(3/4 - 1 inch Styrofoam) and wrap
-keep sugar available as supplementary feed
-spring treat for mites
-feed pollen patty early to stimulate brood. and insulation will stimulate earlier brood. Feed spring syrup if required
-buy queens and pull out NUCs as required to manage the population from swarming

Sugar syrup and blocks are low cost and pay big dividends in bees and honey production. Unless you can access free Styrofoam, 25% of the profit from one NUC will pay for Styrofoam. Get free wrap material by salvaging lumber lift wraps at the lumber yard.


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

Demand is strong early and dies down after the flow. Maybe it's the income tax returns many newbees are spending, because, just starting out does require an investment. But if you want to split your hives for profit, I suggest you graft and use mating nucs. That way you can keep the strong hives strong and pull frames as needed. I'm not sure of your local, but here, I get real busy in March, making and painting and in April, well I'm running out of equipment.


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## johnwratcliff (Feb 24, 2015)

You and I are in the same boat. I plan on selling local nucs but that won't happen for two years. I don't know what your hive count is but I'm going to keep certain hives for honey only. The unproductive hives will get broken down to nucs. When my hive count gets to 80-100 I'll start selling bees. I am going to raise my own queens next season. I'll eventually have hives that will be used to produce local queens only. I like what Michael Palmer peaches about being sustainable.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

johnwratcliff said:


> I like what Michael Palmer peaches about being sustainable.


Remember that you can run a two sided operation using nucleus colonies. The production colonies are used to make honey. They are maintained as strong as possible to take advantage of the available flows. Only splitting to control swarming in colonies that don't respond to proper suppering and reversing, etc. 

For the nuc side, winter nucleus colonies and use them in the summer to make more nucleus colonies. I can split nucs 5-10 to 1, depending if you raise or buy the queens. With 50 wintered nucs, I can harvest enough brood to make enough queens and have enough extra brood to set up 400 + nucs. Even if I lose 20% in the winter...usually only 10%...that would leave 320+. Then keeping back 50 for the following year I would have 270 to sell. And, still have my honey producers good and strong because I didn't have to split them for nucs. 

One year I had 50 wintered nucs, raised enough cells to make 1200 queens, and set up 330 nucs. The total frames of brood produced by those 50 nucs was 905. If I had bought the queens I could have made 450+ nucs.


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## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> For the nuc side, winter nucleus colonies and use them in the summer to make more nucleus colonies. I can split nucs 5-10 to 1, depending if you raise or buy the queens. With 50 wintered nucs, I can harvest enough brood to make enough queens and have enough extra brood to set up 400 + nucs. Even if I lose 20% in the winter...usually only 10%...that would leave 320+. Then keeping back 50 for the following year I would have 270 to sell. And, still have my honey producers good and strong because I didn't have to split them for nucs.


Mike- First off I wanted to tell you how great it was to meet and speak with you over the weekend. Thank you for being so generous in sharing your knowledge and time with me. Quick question for you, I believe you said that you are usually grafting from May 20 till July 20. Is this also the time you are selling your nucs, or are you wintering all 300 +/- and then selling them in the Spring as overwintered, keeping 50 for yourself? Since you use 4 frame equipment, are you selling 4 frame nucs or are they 5 frame at the time of sale? Thanks again, I appreciate it,
-Dave


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I sell my nucs in early May after they went through a winter. This year I have 700 nucs going into winter. Because I raise so many queens, I now keep 100 nucs for use as brood factories. When I sell them, the nucs are 5 frame...I winter them as 4/4 or 4/4/4.


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## red (Jan 15, 2013)

I have done this very successfully without the nuc sales. Plan on dedicating all of your time not working your regular job on bee business. Also if you don't have a wife you better go get one as it will take allot of her time to. Don't plan any vacations as you won't have time for them. Make a plan for competition because everyone wants to do this these days. Another problem is loosing bee yards to all the people you just started in a bee business. I didn't start mine but our local bee club did. Nobody has respect these days. If this sounds negative it's not meant to be it is just reality for me.


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## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> I sell my nucs in early May after they went through a winter. This year I have 700 nucs going into winter. Because I raise so many queens, I now keep 100 nucs for use as brood factories. When I sell them, the nucs are 5 frame...I winter them as 4/4 or 4/4/4.


Mike-Do you find you need to treat your nucs or does harvesting frames of brood for increase keep the mite populations low enough for you?
-Dave


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Depends on the mite load of the brood source. Using heavily infested brood to make up the nucs means the nucs will be heavily infested.


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## johnbeejohn (Jun 30, 2013)

mike what mite treatments do you use? formic?


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

Mike, I have read that everyone sells out every year. That people need to order early and if not risk not getting a package or a nuc. I have seen some sites say they are sold out already for 2016. Do you sell out of nucs? I am very small scale and sold enough last year to cover the lumber cost. I did sell what I had available, (7 nucs) but after that, I didn't have anybody asking. I am going to try and sell about 10 this year.


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## Bees of SC (Apr 12, 2013)




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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

amtraz


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

rookie2531 said:


> Do you sell out of nucs? I am very small scale and sold enough last year to cover the lumber cost.


I could sell every nuc I make, but keep a lot for my own use. Get a rep for a quality product and they will sell themselves.


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

Michael Palmer said:


> I could sell every nuc I make, but keep a lot for my own use. Get a rep for a quality product and they will sell themselves.


Great advice, I definitely do let the great ones go and the weaker ones stay. Thanks once again.


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