Hello, Mike S. &  Tim T.

 What I'm about to say is going to sound off the wall, but remember I'm  from Calif.,forty miles south east of Sacramento.
 First of all Mike, are you kidding about keeping bees in sub-zero weather and then coming to Calif for the almonds ? Hello, is anyone home, 1980'S with no mites are gone.
 Tim, you mention prepping the in the fall, you didn't say what took place during the winter?
 
Here's how I run mine,

January --December
After I pull out of the Almonds I head for home , I drive right threw cherry & apple country ( Stockton& Lodi ), it pays about $10-$15, I don't stop the truck for anything under $30. I get home, place the bees in 200 hive loads.  I start shaking about April 1st, and pull about 5lbs. of bees each shake, I shake about three rounds. At the beginning of May I only have about 10 frames of bees, I typically split those in half which leaves me about a 4 frame hive.  Once I get everyone queened right, I focus fairly heavily on the mites.  I then go down to some summer pollination (stock seed) around the middle of June.  From there on I set the throttle on cruse control.  I don't do much after June other than a few suppers and monitor mites (eather roll), from there I have another job that I go to.  I don't consider running this style with 1500 colonies a full time job.  

My two-ton averages 12000 miles a year, that will give you a little idea how hard I'm running.  If you figure $150 for almonds, $100 for bulk bees and $35 for summer pollination, it adds up to somewhere around to $275/hive. 

A person has to find there own nitch, what works for me doesn't mean it will work for someone else in a different area.  

As to the fall, here in Calif. any kind of honey flow stops around August, but we still have 100 degree days till mid October.  Keeping bees strong isn't a picnic here either.  I do more bee work in the months Nov. Dec, and Jan. than I do any other part of the year.  Once I get those hives brooding in the right direction, that's my main focus. Remember, if you're brooding, your raising mites too.  I focus on a couple of things for revenue. If I had to chase honey at 80 cents a pound I think I would flip burgers at MacDonald's instead.  

Speaking of honey, I pack quite a bit of that stuff, I buy it from local keepers in my area.  They scratch their head when they come up and visit at my Christmas party and see a nice Cowen auto-load system sitting there collection dust.  I sell to an outfit that has about 200 stores, yes, I get pushed from other packers, but if the bakery calls at 10 o'clock at night because they forgot to order, their honey is delivered by 4AM that morning. Service goes a long way with price, and that goes for almond growers as well.

As far as the Australian package bees, I was at the Calif. beekeepers Assoc. convention in Tahoe.  A guy was giving a slide show about how great they looked in the first part of May,  double boxes of bees. I looked over at a friend and said "Who in the hell wants double boxes of bees in May?" Nintey percent of my revenue comes in from Feb.-April.  After that the bees are basically a liability.

Mite controls:
I know some bee keepers would have better chance killing flees off a dog than they would a mite off a bee.  They do these so called "tests", put in some miticide and a sticky board underneath.  They say they dropped 50 mites or whatever, the first question I ask them is, "How do you know you killed 100% that were there?" They just give me a deer in the headlights look.  I ask them to try an eather roll, pretty easy and straight forward.  I use about six different methods for mites, most may not be legal. 

You said you had bees near Modesto, funny thing, I have about 1000 there myself. If you come out this way, please let me know and I can show you what I've been writing about.

Brokers:
Randy Oliver mentioned a couple, one comes to mind, Mike Rosso.  I beg to differ with Randy on this topic. They mention a four frame minimum, below that you are docked. What they don't tell you is that they say they want strong colonies but they are not willing to pay for them. Example, if I took a load of bees up to Orland, CA and they graded out at 13 frames, I would not get paid for all 13, but if you didn't meet the minimum, they sure find time to dock you there.  This is not much different than how it is run down South.
 
P.S. Randy Oliver came to my beekeeping Christmas Party this year, he can tell you first hand how sharp my pencil is.  


-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and  other info ---