"One of our members in Iowa had a yard of bees where snow mobiles  were 
used on a regular basis.
 
Best beekeeper that I have ever known, retired now; kept bees in one of the 
 coldest parts of Montana.  He wintered in MT, never migrated, raised all 
of  his own queens for a ~3000 colony operation, and had the highest average 
yields  over extended periods of years, that I've ever seen - we actually 
measured some  of his yields at over 200 pound average harvest/year.
 
He left lots of honey on the colonies in the fall, liked Italians, wanted  
large over-wintering bee populations.  In MT, he'd argue, you need bees to  
take advantage of the spring flow, which comes hard and fast.  Miss that,  
and the bee populations peak after the first of the main summer flows,  never 
catch up.
 
In each yard, he'd leave a pallet with a stack of honey supers, full of  
honey, in the corner of each beeyard.
He used a waxed cardboard box to wrap each group of two hives, and wrapped  
the stack of honey to keep out mice and bees.
 
In February, he'd load up a snowmobile, drive to the yards.  He'd park  on 
the side of the road, bridge the ramps from his pickup bed to the snow on 
the  other side of the barbed wire fences - in his area, the fences were 
buried in  the snow, and ride over to the beeyard on the snowmobile.  He'd pop 
lids,  looking at the size of the bee population and access honey stores.  If 
the  bees were low on stores, he'd unwrap his stockpile of honey supers, add 
one to  each of the low colonies.
 
In the spring, when he could drive in to the yards, he'd pick up any honey  
supers from these pallets that he hadn't used, store them in his warehouse 
until  the late fall, then rotate them back out to his stockpile pallets, 
with the  'old' honey at the top of the stack, so that he'd fed it first.
 
By early summer, his colonies had huge bee populations.  He used  herbicide 
in his beeyards - one of the few things I didn't like, but he'd again  
argue, 'weeds get in the way of the bees, don't want to slow them up at the  
entrance'.  He also would open up his entrances, using bottom boards with  tall 
risers - entrance slots were at least an inch tall.  And his bee  
populations would roar in and out - almost unnerving to see the number of bees  
coming and going.
 
He laughed at the guys who tried to shut down the queen in the fall,  
conserve food.  From his perspective, every bee that was still alive in the  
spring paid him back and then some.  He kept detailed production records -  back 
in the days when the indemnity program was still in place, he had some  
problems with APHIS sponsored grasshopper spray programs.  He had some go  
arounds about bee and crop loss, and since no one would believe that his honey  
crops were as large as he claimed, he took extra steps to document them.   
I've measured some of those crops, watched one night as the trucks rolled up 
to  take out the first of the previous season's honey crop, had time to 
count the  barrels.  His bees did what he claimed.
 
So, he broke the rules - wanted strong colonies to overwinter - the bigger  
the better, wanted excess food, opened colonies on cold days, added supers 
of  honey at that time, if needed, and made huge crops.  
 
He did have one fatal flaw - he learned his beekeeping by starting to work  
for the local beekeeper when he was in high school.  He never went to bee  
meetings.  When mites started to spread, he reasoned that he didn't  
migrate, was isolated.  So, he refused to change his beekeeping  practices.  It put 
him out of business - sold what he had remaining to a  younger beekeeper.
 
Jerry


 

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