> Pre-emptive requeening, while practiced by many large scale 
> beekeepers, might not be cost effective if the increase in 
> production is not great. The money and labor might be better 
> spent some other way (eg, use the new queens to increase 
> the number of colonies).

It is not so much the enhanced size of brood spheres as it is the
reliability of knowing that one will only have a insignificant number of
colonies that produce no crop, or are under-strength because it swarmed.
Swarming is just one more stupid and perfectly preventable way to have a
colony turn into a welfare queen rather than predictable point on the bell
curve of reliable production.

And I did use new queens to increase numbers of colonies, I made splits with
some of them every year.

Between requeening nearly everything in sight, and caging everything except
the colonies put on sourwood, I was tuning for reliability, which meant I
met my commitments without headaches, and without scrambling.  The value of
a calm and orderly operation in the midst of so much external chaos is very
valuable, as it allows on to focus on basic issues of craftsmanship and
execution, not on desperate hail-mary-pass logistical interventions to make
up for a basic lack of sufficient colonies of reliable strength.  I never
went anywhere near an almond tree, but I shared the problematic task of
producing and/or maintaining strong colonies when the snow hadn't even
melted.   

Its May now, so swarming is mostly over, and supers have been on for a week,
but the weather here remains cold, with drenching rains.
I wrapped my candyboards in pallet-wrap, and stacked them with care, as some
colonies may need them back.
Horrible spring.  The entire air wing has been grounded more often than not.

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