>What is left out of these calculations is the total honey gotten and also the amount of labor getting it. By dividing the colonies in the spring and requeening them, one can increase the total amount of honey obtained compared to not dividing nor requeening.
<snip>
>They spent a lot of the summer sitting there whereas had I doubled the count and introduced new queens, that could have built up and made the same average on the fall flow, yielding twice as much honey in the fall. Ie., a lower average, but a higher total.

The key word here is "If".   Why didn't you?  

I'm guessing  because  you assessed the likelihood of the various scenarios and made your choice  based  on the odds as you saw them going in, not from hindsight.

What I have been talking  about  is risk, and some people get it and some don't.

There are several aspects to risk.  One is the likelihood of various outcomes and the other, most important,  is the effect of each on the beekeeper's wellbeing. 

While a lucky payoff may improve the beekeeper's circumstances a little or a lot, a  catastrophic  loss might put him/her out of the game.

Surviving(older)  commercial beekeepers are usually people who tend to choose options which appear to offer low risk of disaster, even at cost of possible bonanzas.

I'm guessing that you weighed the costs and the benefits and the odds and made a logical decision which integrated  your experience over the years and suggested that on average you would do best not gambling on a late flow.  

I had to deal with that choice every year, as I outlined in a recent post.

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