On 11/29/2011 8:34 AM, Peter L Borst wrote: > > But there are at least two ways to accomplish this. One is to take brood and bees from your colonies over time to make as many splits as needed. > > Another is called "nuking the bees" where the bees are simply divided up as far as they will go. > I guess there is a third way Peter. Sort of like your way #2, but over two seasons. As you know I Nuke non-productive colonies in mid-summer, and winter the resulting nucleus colonies. Rather than using those that survive the winter to re-stock dead-outs, re-queen weak colonies, or make increase, some are held back. They go through the first winter as 8 frame nucleus colonies...4 over 4 combs. In the spring, they are given an additional 4 combs and become 3 story nucs, with each story holding 4 combs. These units are run as brood factories. This past summer, I used 50 wintered nucleus colonies in this way. Beginning in early May, I harvested brood from each in rotation to stock my cell building colonies. Every 4 days I removed a total 7 of frames of sealed brood and 2 of honey for each cell builder...3 or 4 cell builders every 4 days. this brood was removed from several nucleus colonies, keeping each parent strong enough to be harvested again a couple weeks later, but below the swarming threshold. I probably stocked 35 cell builders from May 9 to June 15 approx. On the 16th of June I switched gears and began making new nucleus colonies for wintering in the 2011-12 winter. I made 330 nucleus colonies from what was left of those 50 original nucs. They are now in my wintering yards in a 4 over 4 configuration. If I had not used any brood for my cell building, I could have used it entirely for nuc making. I figure, counting the amount of brood used for cell building and nucs made...I could have made 500 nucleus colonies from the original 50 wintered nucs...or the 10 fold increase talked about. If I figure 5 nucleus colonies made from each non-productive colony in the summer of 2010 became my 50 brood factories, that would be 10 colonies total sacrificed that first summer. The resources of these 10 colonies were expanded into 500 or... 50:1. With less than 10% loss in the wintering 4 over 4 nucleus colonies, my apiary becomes sustainable over time...and eliminates the need for me to move south. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm