"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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