Thanks,  very interesting.   One last question,  when do you usually make
those splits?  Whats the general timing to have strong colonies,  and still
have strong hives for honey?




Its quite interesting overall to understand some of the differences location
makes.  Your location being toally different than mine.  Feed trial you
recently published are a perfect example,  great and fascinating work,  hard
to translate some of to climates that get snow and winter clusters for 3
months or better.


I have a friend In OH who also claims that second year hives are not worth
the effort.  He runs about 1000 hives for honey.  His choice is to kill them
off usually.  This runs a bit contrary to what the "general public" is
trying to do.  Most want to overwinter and make honey every year. With the
belief that second year hives are better.  Another friend in FL runs about
6000 hives swears that hives that are shaken for packages and requeened
always make more honey than the ones just requeened.

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of randy oliver
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2014 8:50 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BEE-L] Locally adapted?

>How far do you split,  and what do you do with the constant surplus??

We split each strong hive 5 ways, from which we typ get 4 queenright nucs,
of which we typically keep 2 and sell two.  We try to start the season with
twice the colonies that we plan to take to almonds 10 months later.  During
the season, we continually combine nonperforming colonies with others, so
our numbers drop throughout the season.

Your math works.  We typically sell off up to half of our brood combs each
season in nucs.  Our winter losses are low, but we place strong selective
pressure on our colonies during the season.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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