Allen Dick wrote:
>Splits are an easy way to introduce cells or queens compared to large
>colonies.  The reduced populations accept queens better, and if you
>can manage to have only young bees in the split, it will accept
>queens better, although it may not do as well in the long run unless
>recombined.
 
Agree, but we are working to find ways to cut time. Making splits will take
time and also mean you have to keep material just for that purpose, extra
tops and bottoms. To make splits and leave in the same apiary means
you will have all the field bees in one hive, so you should move them to
next site you visit for best result. More work and time.
 
>At $2 each, the cost compares to 12 minutes of work for someone being
>paid $10 per hour.  To introduce mated queens in 12 minutes each,
>considering preparation time, travel time, instruction, finding queens,
>making errors, etc is difficult. (I'm sure I'll get some flack on
>this, but I'll stand by it).
 
Well, I'm not running a large operation, just 250 hives by myself. But let's
look at the costs for me; to produce my own cells I need 1,5 minutes per
cell. I take them out and pop them into the top of each hive at my normal
visit with ten days interval for swarm checking/adding boxes. That extra work
will take another minute. Let's say I need to find the queen in 20% of my
hives, and I need 12 min per hive. That would add an average of 2,5 min to the
time.That is 5 min per hive spent on requeening. With a success rate of more
than 50%. And no extra equipment needed.
 
I buy breeder queens from different sources and use different lines to create
maximum heterosis effect in my produktion hives. But I'm not into queen-
breeding and selection for breeding-stock (not yet). Then I will have to start
using nucs or making splits.
 
Regards   P-O