Almond Pollination - preparing hives

[OzBuzz]

Greetings from the Land Downunder...

I'm looking at involving my hives in commercial almond pollination in July - I was wondering how you normally prepare your hives for that? I run 8 frame boxes and will be using two deep for the pollination... obviosuly they need enough stores to get them through winter but how do you go about the early brood build up to make sure you have enough field bees? is it as simple as throwing a pollen patty under the lid? and how soon before the contract should you put the patty under the lid?

[rdy-b]

you will need a minimum of three rounds of brood-of long lived winter bees to maintain hive strength-
so starting 3-4 moths ahead of time will accomplish this -we feed a DIET of protein sub to maintain vitelogen
reserves in the bees and this maintains the health and longevity of the bees life through winter-IT would
be possible to place your bees on a bloom of  Eucalyptus for the pollen flow-dont know if it times right with
your winter needs-but in the US there is not enough to go around-also hives will need a reserve of honey or syrup during during there stay in almonds -should be easy over there without the varoa and the viruses they vector
what do almonds pay in country--RDY-B

[OzBuzz]

Thanks RDY-B for that advice - much appreciated... I'm actually thinking of re-queening some of my hives shortly too. In regard stores they have plenty of those - it's just about keeping the brood numbers up over winter although our winters aren't exactly freezing - there's still days where they can get out and gather nectar etc. I was thinking of doing an extraction toward the end of this month and then dropping the hives back to two hive bodies and closing them up for the winter. In regard prices - it pays around $70AUS per hive over here

you will need a minimum of three rounds of brood-of long lived winter bees to maintain hive strength-
so starting 3-4 moths ahead of time will accomplish this -we feed a DIET of protein sub to maintain vitelogen
reserves in the bees and this maintains the health and longevity of the bees life through winter-IT would
be possible to place your bees on a bloom of  Eucalyptus for the pollen flow-dont know if it times right with
your winter needs-but in the US there is not enough to go around-also hives will need a reserve of honey or syrup during during there stay in almonds -should be easy over there without the varoa and the viruses they vector
what do almonds pay in country--RDY-B