population/production ?

william1 · Unread post by **william1** » March 18th, 2003, 9:08 pm

With the current price of Honey , does it make sense to try for maximum production per hive ? I am talking from a commercial perspective , where the standard method is generally to achieve most profit in the operation .
Some ways to look at maximum production may be intensive management and or a 2 Queen system , any thoughts ?

Unread post by **Allen Dick** » March 19th, 2003, 4:44 am

Some swear by two-queening, but I practised it for several years and never found that it increased my production. It definitely did increase my costs, and it did increase the bee populations and how much they ate.

Maybe it was my timing. Maybe they built up on the flow. I don't know, but the result was strong hives that wintered very well, the need to carry a ladder, and no increase in net crop.

I decided that it was easier and cheaper to run 200 single queen hives than 100 double queen hives. Wintering is not quite as good, and queenless hives are more common, but the work is easier, the crop is about double, and the expense and pressure is much less.

Risk is a big factor to consider. It is easy to underestimate the danger of putting out too much money and effort for a less than certain reward. Long term survivors in agriculture tend to be those who are conservative and, if they lose money, it is potential profit passed up, not real cash spent on intensive activities that did not pan out. They tend to take the sure profit and pass up the less certain gains.

Profit is a hard thing to calculate in advance because we cannot know the future. We can know with some certainty -- if we are honest with ourselves -- what our costs will be, but the returns can only be guessed.

We can control our costs, but never be certain that spending money will result in a profit, so we are playing the odds and always have to consider and be ready for the worst case scenario.

Some do quite well two-queening, but it seems to suit some regions and not others. I'd try it in a very limited test for a year or two and ask close neighbours what they think before jumping in with both feet. There is a real risk of overmanipulation and dividing clusters too much, especially in a region with cold nights. The two small clusters may do worse than one big one. (I did my two-queening with two 2 lb packages and that is about as small as I would go for cluster size).

allen

Tom · Unread post by **Tom** » March 19th, 2003, 8:22 am

I find this one of the most interesting topics in beekeeping. In my modest operation, I have tried two queens in two or three different ways, and others have explained to me several other approaches. There is no question that you get a faster build up. And you can get some marvellous swarms. However, I have never been able to solve the more labour for total higher returns equation. I'm glad to read this is not just my own failure.

I also find it a little suspicious that, while so many are willing to tell me how to do it, I notice very few consistently do it themselves.

I wonder how many methods and testimonials we would get if we stoked this topic on the forum?

Yet, there must be some optimum condition, location or method where this does work. Maybe there is an equipment or process secret that I haven't grasped.

Cheers,
Tom

Guest · Unread post by **Guest** » March 21st, 2003, 8:22 pm

C. L Farrar did some work maximizing production at the U. of Wisconsin. He used three brood bodies and worked his colonies every ten days. He always put the oldest brood at the top of the hive so the queen could move up and lay in the open cells left from the emerging brood. I don't recall the exact results but he put up some big numbers. His results may be out of date. I think he did his work in the 50's or early 60's. There have been lots of changes since then. Steve Tabor talked about Farrar's methods in one of the recent bee journals.

Guest · Unread post by **Guest** » March 21st, 2003, 8:51 pm

I actually was inspired by Farrar and built 100 of the Farrar hives. I hauled the logs, had the pine milled, and built special tools to rip the boards. The hives used 6-5/8" frames and held 12 frames per box. They were beautiful, but not as productive as expected.

I sold them in about 1976, when I decided to expand and to go with standard equipment.

allen

Tim · Unread post by **Tim** » March 22nd, 2003, 9:59 am

I did it for the first time this Feb. when I combined two hives which I keep by my house. Yesterday I put on a frame of Hoggs comb cassets, and I took the 3 super hive apart to combine the brood into one brood chamber to force the bees to draw out the cassets quickly.

Now, the one queen was young and had only one frame of brood. This was in the top super. The other queen was laying on the bottom. So now the two queens are together in the one brood chamber.

Do any of you have a guess as to whether or not the queens will fight?