how would YOU increase hive numbers as quick as possible

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ladaok

House Bee
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
147
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2
Location
bte puke bay of plenty new zealand
Hive Type
None
the hives I have left and what I had are poles apart ..... using Q/C's maybe virgin Q's ( mated Q's would be nice but V expensive )
would you go with 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1 frame splits ? feel free to add any random thoughts .... & I'm not worried about a honey crop
 
the hives I have left and what I had are poles apart ..... using Q/C's maybe virgin Q's ( mated Q's would be nice but V expensive )
would you go with 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1 frame splits ? feel free to add any random thoughts .... & I'm not worried about a honey crop
Are you talking about this time of year?
Or starting in the spring.
How many hives do you have and how strong are they?
 
It doesn't show on the mobile version but OP location is New Zealand so their season will be beginning soon.

I think you may get more informed opinion from a New Zeland Forum or local beekeepers.

As for random thoughts use poly nucs and feed well.
 
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3 frames minimum for me at the start of the season, 1 frames of BIAS, 1 frame of emerging brood, 1 frame of stores/pollen + the bees that were on the frames. I would add a virgin or a mated queen if I have any ready from my apideas....end of season here in South Wales (from now until early September) 5-6 frames nuc with at least 3 frames of brood + 1 mated queen, no Qcs or virgin as you don't want to push your luck if the virgin takes weeks to mate due to poor weather, etc.
 
It doesn't show on the mobile version but OP location is New Zealand so their season will be beginning soon.

I think you may get more informed opinion from a New Zeland Forum or local beekeepers.

As for random thoughts use poly nucs and feed well.
Ah! That does make a difference!
 
Ladaok,
I see you say the mated queens are expensive but have you ever tried Italian queens from a reputable breeder there? Might be worth the money and perhaps a change in the genetics might be good?
I'm across the Tasman but further south than the Bay of Plenty and am trying Italian queens. We had snow to sea level yesterday and I see you have some on the mountains in the North Island but you are in a warm spot there in the Bay.
 
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Ladaok,
I see you say the mated queens are expensive but have you ever tried Italian queens from a reputable breeder there? Might be worth the money and perhaps a change in the genetics might be good?
I'm across the Tasman but further south than the Bay of Plenty and am trying Italian queens. We had snow to sea level yesterday and I see you have some on the mountains in the North Island but you are in a warm spot there in the Bay.
Make sure you check very carefully any queens you import from Italy as they have the small hive beetle there, make sure there's nothing lurking in the packaging. You don't have it in NZ at the moment.
 
Hi Pembroke,
Sorry, my wording is ambiguous I see. I was meaning Italian queens from within NZ (not from Europe). There are a couple of people selling Italian Queens in the Bay of Plenty area I believe, and probably many more throughout NZ .
 
Thanks everyone , to my Aussie friend, all our bees are based on Italian stock, the only new import to NZ was some Canollian queens sometime ago, there is NO WAY of importing any be stock to NZ except illegally

Yes ...I think I will go with 3 frame splits and Q/C and leave the original Q on 1 frame where the hive is

jeff33 ... manuka has been hit with a bazooka ...the whole saga was a money making venture based on bullshit and greed, and little or know science, turns out that clover has as much anti what ever as manuka muck. now the goal posts have been moved, the chance of finding that elusive jar of gold has all but gone ...along with hundreds of beeks
 
The poly nuc suggestion was on the money, they're a game changer in that nucs can be made up that much smaller and still thrive.
Must be coming up to kiwi fruit flowering in the BOP, anything not on a pollination contract split mercilessly and add a cell, I remember queen castles were quite popular out there to make increase.
 
Thanks everyone , to my Aussie friend, all our bees are based on Italian stock, the only new import to NZ was some Canollian queens sometime ago, there is NO WAY of importing any be stock to NZ except illegally

Hi Ladaok,
I wasn't suggesting bringing in new queens from outside of New Zealand. My word "there" in my first post meant New Zealand, being there where you are, as opposed to all the way from Italy. I have bought Italian queens but I bought them here in Australia (bred and raised here by expert and respected long standing queen bee breeders), not from Italy. There would be similarly respected breeders there in NZ too of course.
I had one such queen in a hive this year on a good nectar source and wow did they bring in some nectar and build up fantastic numbers. The mongrel queen hives next to them (with my queens) were hopeless by comparison, a waste of my time really and gave us a good stinging too!
 
...the whole saga was a money making venture based on bullshit and greed, and little or know science, turns out that clover has as much anti what ever as manuka muck. now the goal posts have been moved, the chance of finding that elusive jar of gold has all but gone ...along with hundreds of beeks
:facts::hurray: I hope this becomes more widely known in the UK. A friend was advised to use manuka honey to help her over a minor illness, I offered her raw honey foraged only a few miles from her home. She preferred to pay premium price for manuka she admitted she didn't like tasting. But bang goes another storyline for Brokenwood Mysteries!
 
:facts::hurray: I hope this becomes more widely known in the UK. A friend was advised to use manuka honey to help her over a minor illness, I offered her raw honey foraged only a few miles from her home. She preferred to pay premium price for manuka she admitted she didn't like tasting. But bang goes another storyline for Brokenwood Mysteries!

So sad, and now, they are finding significant weed killer residues in the manuka ...? that's weird don't you think ? No one here in NZ would spray manuka with glyphosphate ! only farmers reseeding paddocks use it, those paddocks will have clover and other flower types, that bees forage on, which means the so called manuka is already diluted before it even gets to the processor ...when the manuka craze was really going like the Klondike gold rush, I could sell my multiflora honey for $ 14 / k , but the NZ government HAD to change the goal posts, now I cannot get even $2 / k, simply because the no longer can use my type of honey to dilute the ' manuka ' down
 
About five years ago my local association had a talk from one of our lady beekeepers who spent about six months with a commercial beekeeper in New Zealand.

She was told that Manuka honey for years had no domestic market and was mainly used in cakes. However there was a seasonal abundance of Manuka honey so the marketing men got to work.

Many here will remember what they did for Kiwi fruit.

First they change the name from Chinese gooseberries to a more pleasant sounding Kiwi fruit. It's still IMO a pretty tasteless fruit but has vitamin benefits. BTW the fruit is not native to N.Z. but growing condition there are excellent for it. So the marketeers were first successful with this one. And then they focused on Manuka honey. (Most will know that the Kiwi is the native bird of N.Z.)

So two things happened. 1; it was first sold through chemist outlets (at least here in Ireland,) so it had to be better. 2; they sold it at a greatly elevated price, so it had to be better. The rest is history.

A fool and their money and all that....

Ladaok, have you heard anything along these lines?

Fred,
 
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I have heard the same about Manuka, i.e. it was a product no one would buy. I did once read the 'study' extolling its benefits, there was no comparison to other honye's and all the benefits in reality also apply to all honey, e.g. antiseptic.. etc..

Fair play to the NZ marketing people/gov. Think I have seem them do the same with lamb, I remember a claim that despite being shipped round the world it had less carbon miles than buying welsh lamb for people in wales. I think we would all like to have governments that promoted our goods as well as the NZ gov does.
 
Worth reading Cliff Van Eaton's Manuka: the biography of an extraordinary Honey, which confirms that manuka was pretty much unsaleable until Peter Molan carried out his research into the effects of manuka at the University of Waikato, and then Dr Thomas Henle, who in Dresden 26 years later identified methylgloxal as the unique factor; no surprises that the marketing machine went to work.

There are chapters titled Giving the stuff away, The press release that grew legs, and Merely a weed.

The jury is still out on the benefits of medical-grade manuka (at least in this NHS report from 2013) but it did recommend that clover honey is not used for infected wounds where multiple types of bacteria are present as it does not have a broad enough effect.

Irish beekeepers may be pleased to read an abstract of a report comparing the benefits of manuka and Irish honey. None of this can be claimed definitively because expensive research has not been carried out and the authors suggest lamely that Irish heather honey should be examined for potential health benefits. I don't know how much or how long it would take to carry out trials, but I can't see anyone putting hand in pocket to prove a benefit for a small market.

C19 has led to a re-assessment of UK food production and supply and in this context there is no good argument for shifting any honey 11,500 miles, and every reason to work to raise the value of our regional honeys.
 

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