I try and make a living beekeeping. We run about 500 to 1000 hives
in Florida. Here we have 3 major flows a year. I have also always had
a very hard time finding queens because I'm color blind. For this
reason I have tried every way that I have read in order to find a queen.
About 3 years ago we read about forced supercedure. This method
has been great for us. We run all 6 5/8 supers and hive bodies and no
excluders. These things has helped our operation more than any thing
that we have done sInce we have been bee keeping.
Forced supeercedure has all but stoped swarming, I have not seen a
swarm in a yard of my bees in 3 years. This is one reason that I know
that the method has worked. By not using excluders we have the freedom
on placeing the cells up high in order to save` labor in putting them
in. The lack of excluders helps keep the brood area open a great deal.
The use of all 6 5/8 supers makes it real easy to exchange frams when
the queen lays too high in the hive.
We pay 1.50 for cells and we do it two times a year to ensure that we
have a new queen each year. This is a lot cheeper than queens and a
hell of a lot easier.
BUD