Sorry, but you did not understand anything.
I do not breed queens myself. I use others' material My yard is too small to own breeding. I prefer to by couple of queens from guys who has over 300 or 500 hives. Some have 1000 hives.
It is much more easier to find good mother queens from a 500 hives' gang than 15.
When you rear your own queens, you must sacrifice every year at least one good productive hive. Own queens are not free. It is about 100 kg honey and much money. 100 kg x 6 euros = 600 euros
But if you are going to generate selecting material from dry pastures, that I call brainless suicide.
How many hives you are going to put onto poor pastures where even one hive is too much?
5 hives is not much. 20 hives is something....
5 hives x 100 kg x 6 euros = 3000 euros. That is a price of your queens?
From free markets you can buy 100 mated queens with that sum.
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When I was starting in the beekeeping I was taught that i should not use a second super over the Dadant hive( the skies woud collapse or some other bad thing would happen - so wrong) The Langsthrots are not very popular here, especially amongst the elder beekeepers). There is a common belief that our area ( and southern Bulgaria in generally) doesn't have good honeyflows. This is somewhat true, but only when compared to northern Bulgaria) In south Bulgaria the annual average yeld is 20-30 kg per hive. Most of the seasons there are 2-3 honeyflows, and only in good years 4-5, in "bad" seasons there is at least one ( the figures are for non migratory beekeeping).
I remember one year from those early days of mine when I got 40 kg average, and best hive gave me 45 kg.
Later, I began experimenting, providing more room for honey ( well, nothing bad happen) and not longer since, believe me or not, i began extracting more honey from a single crop than I was used to have before in a season! .... and I stoped sharing info about how much my yeld was, for reasons to not gain myself a bad reputation (LIAR, CHEATER etc.)
Nowadays, the honey extraction is not fun anymore, actually I find it annoying - I usually extract honey when I have nothing else to do. I prefer seasons with one or two (not heavy) honeyflows, the work goes much smoother- doesn't create problems with the cell finishers or the drone rearing collonies.
But if you are going to generate selecting material from dry pastures, that I call brainless suicide.
How many hives you are going to put onto poor pastures where even one hive is too much?
How much a selection error could cost?
In years with heavy flows often I am not able to get the right decision. Not always the best hives gather most honey ( for ex. due to difference in their arrangement of honey stores behaviour).
And by the way, the wholesale price of the honey in Bulgaria is not 6 euros, it is just about 2 euro. And i most often tend to "sell" it below that price ( friends, acquaintances, relatives...)
I use others' material. My yard is too small to own breeding. I prefer to by couple of queens from guys who has over 300 or 500 hives. Some have 1000 hives.
Just to inform you, the beekeepers of this size in Bulgaria also don't select their bees. It is in fact illegal. Those who produce queens for sale are queen propagators, they are not allowed to have their own selection program, nor they have the choice where to buy their breeders from.
My aim in the beekeeping is not a pursuit of greater profits, but converting beekeepers.
I hope now this makes more sense to the above statement.
