>I can easily make four 10-frame honey producers full of
>brood by late May out of one hive coming back from almonds in mid March.
> So your figure of 10 is certainly realistic as far as simply making
>increase.

In the south, but in the north it is different due to a shorter splitting season 
and also the longer, tougher winters.  Where splits are wintered inside, the
latter can be mitigated a bit, but nothing can compensate for the shorter 
and less  predictable  growing season, except possibly the longer days in 
the far north, and in that case, the risks of late and early frost outweigh
the benefit.

As we move north the season shortens considerably.  Southern Ontario and 
Upper New York State have almost two more months of bee season than 
Southern Alberta and that allows for one extra round of splitting.  Moreover 
the wintered bees there are younger and stronger in the first place.  And 
even then many beekeepers take their bees south where they can get even
more splitting cycles in with less risk.

The joker in our deck is that we never know whether our season ends in the 
third week of August or the end of October -- until after it is over. 

A late frost can destroy splits made too small one year while other years they 
do fine.

We have to ask, "Do we feel lucky?"  Picking up dead splits the following spring is 
depressing, especially when we know that if we had been a little less daring, 
we would have had more bees.  Getting greedy can pay sometimes, but it can 
also cost, big time.


So, the risk of large losses tends to make northern beekeepers somewhat 
conservative when it come to splits.

The rule of thumb I have observed over time in my region is that the successful
producers arrange to either buy a number of packages equal to 10% of their 
producing hives each year or make up and winter that number of splits the 
previous year.  Otherwise splitting impacts the production too much.

This applies to those who winter in place.  Those who migrate to warmer 
climes for winter and spring tend to have an excess of bees.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm