Commercial beekeeping is finding the sites that will produce bees and
honey.  Mass expansion of a few colonies may led to more loss of hives then
the increase.  The quality of queens from commercial raising queens is the
best.  They produce more honey and bees with queens from major queen
breeders.  Larger hives will make you honey money in the spring.  If you are
intent on trying to raise your own queens when so much equipment is needed
for expansion.  If you do expand at this time of year there is one saving
item to remember.  In the spring take brood frames from nucs of the new
queens and add them to full size hive.  This will jump start the full size
hives and you will get production of honey.  The nuc will go thur the bloom
and increase to a full hive but will not produce much honey.
       Queen raising cage and cell cup can give you lots of cells to add to
nucs.  These can be purchased from any major beekeeping supply house.  Drones
are part of the queen raising and before they are ran out of the hive in the
fall you have to have the queen cells hatched.  You will need to raise drones
and from the suppliers you can order drone frames.  These frames will have to
be drawn out with wax from healthy well fed large hives.
       Queen cells can be picked up at queen breeders.  They can save you
some money but you may have to queen them again if it doesn't start laying.
If you are in an area where the African bees are this is not a good idea.
       Scratching a single 4 inch line on the 3 day old eggs on the lower
side of brood frames with a hive tool will cause the bees to make queen
cells.  They have to be removed or the queen in the hive will destroy them.
You can put them and the brood frame above the queen extruder.  Splitting the
brood frames to a nuc will develop into a hive with feeding all winter.  This
feeding will cost you any production money that they would make next spring.
       Wintering hives with 5 frames of brood and a super of honey is the
smallest that should be tried.  Anything less is a lost of production for
next year buildup of hives.
       Michael Housel    Orlando