HELP!

[Greywulff]

I got into beekeeping as a hobby, but bee's and beekeeping is now starting to take hold of me  :-D

I want to increase my own stocks of bee's as they are just to expensive in Ireland to be buying. €120/€150 a nuc.
I'm going to try using the nicot system to get the right aged egg. I only intend raising small numbers to mange my own apiary.

After reading article on all of these:

Isaac Hopkins on Queen Rearing 1886
Alley Method of Queen Rearing
Miller Method of Queen Rearing
Smith's Better Queens Method
Smith Method of Queen Rearing

I'm lost, If you take it I'm using the nicot cell system to get the right eggs What system is the best to use to rear them into nuc's????

The second Q. is can anyone link me to either website or good books on hive management. And maybe the best hive management system to follow. Or is there such a thing?

All opinion gratefully accepted.

Thanks

[trixyb]

If you have lots of brood then why don't you buy queens and split existing hives.  This will put you ahead by three weeks and is also 90% cheaper then buying nucs. 

[Greywulff]

Made up nuc's myself, see here http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,18117.0.html

Also would like to get up to 15 hive or more very cheaply by the end of next year. I was given a nicot system as a present and I bought 10 Apidea mating hives. so really I'm set to go its just the right way to go that is bothering me!

My problem is I don't want to end up taking so many bee's from my 3 main hives that they become nuc size again and have to build them up again.  :?  :?

How many frames can I take from those 3 main hives without doing this. They are on 12 frames each going into the winter. And my nuc's are 5 frame size?

[trixyb]

With only three hives to build from you will need more bees to get to 15 hives.  I would wait until spring and split your three hives and build up more bees.  Your three hives may yield 4 or five more giving you 7 or 8 hives to build on during the summer.  After you take your honey off in the fall split all of these hives giving you 14 to 16 hives to winter.  Each nuc you make up should have at least 2 frames of brood. 

[bassman1977]

I'm looking into the Jenter method myself (similar to Nicot from what I can tell).  I think I have a good grasp at how this is done, I'm just trying to understand a couple things which I described in this topic http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,18073.0.html .

[Brian D. Bray]

Unless you have several years experience at beekeeping I wouldn't recommend expanding too fast.  At the most I would do the following: take a frame from each of your larger hives to make 2 nucs.  Thats a total of 2 frames from each hive each into a nuc.
Set up 2 nucs so that you have BFH1, BFH2, FFH3, FND, & HF; where  BFH means Brood Frame from Hive number _, HF is honey frame, and FND is foundation frame.
You can then do the same thing from your nuc hives taking only one frame.  That would give you 7 hives total by the end of the season if all are tended to properly. You can repeat the following year and be up to your desired hive count.  The advantage is you are not over taxed (overwhelmed) with too much too soon.
Mixing the Brood Frames, and attached bees, from different hives doesn't cause a fight because the bees are too confused, by the time they sort things out they are one hive. 

[Michael Bush]

>I'm lost, If you take it I'm using the nicot cell system to get the right eggs What system is the best to use to rear them into nuc's?

The reason for the complex systems you read of in those books is to consistently get queens under all conditions.  Under ideal conditions it's really pretty easy.  But less than ideal conditions require a lot more manipulation to insure the outcome.  If you want a simple method, here it is.  Take a strong hive and put the Jenter box in the middle of the brood nest and compress the hive (remove any empty supers and any partially drawn frames and shake the bees off of them and give them to another hive).  After a few days, find the queen and confine her in the Jenter box (or Nicot box).  After 24 hours, check for eggs in the box.  If there are eggs in most every cell, release the queen and put the box back in the middle of the brood nest.  Three days after confining the queen,  find her and take her and a couple of frames of brood and a couple of frames of honey and put them in a nuc to keep her for later.  Four days after confining the queen, check to see if the eggs have hatched.  If so, transfer the larvae to the cups and put the frame of cups in place of the Jenter (or Nicot) frame.  Thirteen days after you confined the queen, make up the mating nucs.  I use two frame nucs with standard frames so a frame of open brood and a frame of honey is a nuc.  Fourteen days after you confined the queen put the cells in the mating nucs.  Two weeks after that come back and look for eggs and a laying queen.

>The second Q. is can anyone link me to either website or good books on hive management. And maybe the best hive management system to follow. Or is there such a thing?

However many beekeepers there are in the world, that's how many systems there are.  :)

[Greywulff]

However many beekeepers there are in the world, that's how many systems there are.  :)

So there's no hard and fast rules then. Just keep good hives and treat the bee's well.

Thanks everyone for replies and Micheal I may have to put that reply in stone and frame it its just what I was looking for. The way forward...

But I see the point you made Brian expanding too fast may just overwhelm the bee's and me as I may well do harm to the 3 hives I have if I try to much with them. I've heard of mixing bee frames from different hives and confining them to there new home while taken them for a drive for 30 minutes or so and dropping them in a new apiary before letting them out. Suppose to make them so confused and panicky that they don't fight and live in harmony.


To go from 3 to 15 is my goal and if it take 2/3 years so be it. It's a goal.

[Cindi]

Greywulff.  Take your time with your expansions, that is 100% agreed here.  Take that time to really study and get to know your bees, having too many colonies too quickly can become a very overwhelming thing.  I know some people do it.  But me personally, I air on the side of caution.  I like to do things slowly, like building up colonies.  Some people can just zoom into things and fly with it, I take my hat off to them.  There is so much to learn, so much to learn with "hands on", you will get to know your bees so much better if you simply take your time, with a few number of colonies, and then expand, and have a great time doing that too.  Have fun, enjoy life, and love this life we all live, love and share, AND....most of all, have that most wonderful day, Cindi

[Michael Bush]

There are basics, like make sure a hive goes into winter with adequate stores and don't just let them swarm unless you know you'll be around to catch it.  But on the details, there are many opinions.  Often one element from one system doesn't stand very well on its own in another system.  In other words, what we beekeepers work out is a system and sometimes we forget how tied together it is.

As for splits, a strong split will build quickly.  A weak one won't.  I prefer splits either when the bees would have swarmed (just before the flow) or just after the flow.  Just after the flow doesn't hurt your honey crop, but it also doesn't prevent swarming.  So if you go for after the flow, you need to make sure they don't swarm.  I end up making a lot of "weak" splits as mating nucs, but they usually don't build up much.  Sometimes they do somewhat, but mostly they just mate queens.  A strong split would be ten deep frames or fifteen medium frames well covered in bees with a good assortment of resources (emerging, capped, open brood; honey; pollen etc.)

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm