Are commercial keeping practices a good for a few hives?

[Kathyp]

Others have real knowledge to spread, but lack tact in their writing.

you call it tact, i call it economy of words.   :-D

[buzzbee]

TommyT is banned barring further review,after being subtly warned before. His last notes on reply 18  above is a perfect way to find somewhere else to go.
This behavior is not acceptable here.

[yockey5]

Sorry to hear about TommyT.

[buzzbee]

I noted forum bylaws to him,some don't know when to quit. He made his own decision on this matter.
Now lets put this topic back on track. :)

[buck man]

I am glad you were an inspector bjornbee it sheds a little more light on your knowledge.  :) thanks for your comments. I may not be  as eloquent or verbose as you, but I still feel I can get my points across. Let me give you a little more info on myself..
1.  As stated before we rotate in about 8-10 thousand deep frames for new broodcomb every year, and we sell our 5 year old comb in our 5 frame nucs. It works out well and we have had our wax tested for pesticide residue and have found next to none. So those buying our " old " frames are still getting servicable frames. :)

2.  We do not " blanket" treat for any disease. We only treat when we find a problem,  and then only  the infected hives. Whether its varroa, trachea mites, efb, afb, or nose a, and we use approved treatments...TM 100 , tylosin, menthol, formic acid, nozevit, or oxalic. Not sure if oxalic is approved though....just know it works great when the hive is broodless. We are in our bees almost weekly from march through July.


3. Our holdind yards tend to be smaller than most commercial operations. We ship 6.5 loads of 408 hives to CA. Every spring. We put 816 in each holding yard , and there are about 20 miles between locations. Unfortunately there are other beekeepers bees between us. These are the bees that always concern me.our summer honey yards are 28-32 hive locations.

4.  As far s our queens go , we don't have access to cells so we use mated queens and requeen 80% of our outfit every year. We have  recently started using a modified double queen method with great success. About 90% of the new queens when united take, and during the honey flow both queens we have found working together. It makes for monster honey producers and has increased our yields by about 30%.


5.  As far a supplemental feeds go ...yes we do that. We never pull honey out of the top brood box, but the hives are seldom heavy enough to winter . We feed both sucrose and high fructose syurup to get there weight up to par. We shoot for about 115-120# double deep hive weight. As we feed we also use a high quality pollen sub. That we mix ourselves. It has a complete amino acid profile along with the fatty lipids needed for brood rearing and assimilation.we have all our honey off by the end of august and begin our feeding program and if necessary our mite treatments. We do all this to inure we have an average strength hive of about 10 frames by Feb. First. That's tough to do but with proper management you can winter huge colonies.
So when i say that a hobby keeper would be a fool to not use pollen patties I do believe it. I know that the young bees   we raise in the late fall are the reason we can successfully winter huge hives, and huge hives translate into more 
brood to make splits or sell, and also make more honey. Who wouldn't want that?  I also winter every year the same three hives  behind my shop.  They go through all  of winters glory and always come through like gang busters using the same practices that I use for all my other " traveling" hives. So my methods do work for my non migrating hives too.

Hope you guys enjoy this and possibly helped.
Thanks.

[ajharwood]

What I have to say comes from our local club president.  He said that hobby beekeeping should be geared more like commercial beekeeping.  He also said that back in the day (I thing before the 60's) all beekeeping was like commercial beekeeping is today.  I think the biggest thing he is getting at, is the time in the hive.  The less time in the hive the better.

[kingbee]

... How do the keeping practices of a commercial operation fair when managing a small number say 10 or less hives?...

To help answer your question turn it around.  "How do keeping practices of a hobbest managing 10 hives compare to a commercial operation?
One large bee breeder told me he shipped over 9,000 packages last year.  That's over 13 tons of bees.  He's got to be doing something right.