Once again when reading this it comes back to my mind that what we do with
luck is 30% of the result.
the other 70% depends on the season

when I started beekeeping it happen to be a great year downhere, that
haven`t repeat since then
on that year i started with 70 colonies in May (remember I am in the
southern hemisphere) that were left over in an avocado farm
i cured for varroa and tracheal mites. Didn't care for nosema on those
years (big mistake)
I follow the method of Enrique Fey from argentina, feeding weekly syrup
with Promotor-L
and weekly going frame by frame on each colony taking notes of frames with
bees, frames with brood, and quality of that brood.
after 60 days, I went over those notes, and killed the queen of those
colonies that were 1 standar deviation under the average
I make many nucs (if I remember correctly close to 3 two frames nucs per
each queen less colony) I bought 10 days queen cells.
After 5 days I check those nucs and inserted new cells on the ones with out
a virgin.
with the 50 queen right colonies left I took three frames out each 11 days
and make nucs with cells
I kept on feeding syrup with promotor weekly to th colonies
After the queen mated in the nucs I started to feed the nucs with syrup and
promotor-l

Making a long story short, for the 15th of september I had 700 colonies
ready for pollinating avocados
by the 15h of november I had 1200 colonies and 14 tons of avodado honey
for christmas I was dead, full of queen in my pockets and with more
colonies that I could manage

Now I take life easier and ready to accept what that 70% that season want
to give me.

Juanse Barros J.
APIZUR S.A.
Carrera 695
Gorbea - CHILE
+56-45-271693
08-3613310
http://apiaraucania.blogspot.com/
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