Your plans for 2017

[Tom Bick]

some good photos of Russian tree beekeepers on the excellent Bee Photographer's website.

http://thebeephotographer.photoshel...of-the-cold/G0000dWY2F4IFeKw/I0000PoDoTAaEYXQ

 

[tonyofarr]

I have offers of 3 new apiary sites this year which sound promising. I'm hoping for a lot more honey this year. Also thinking about which colonies I will raise queens from, but will not have any firm plans until March. I'm also thinking about buying a couple of queens to bring in some fresh blood, but still mulling that one over.

 

[Plenty of honey]

First, Get all my stock successfully through the winter, Finish preparing the new 100 Dadant hives i am currently painting up. Open up four further Apiaries in new locations. Use all my overwintering colonies to fill those new hives, then create the last 20 or however many i am short by harvesting queens from overwintering mating nucs, making new nucs in May to fill remaining . Spring harvest and building new stock, After Spring harvest, Make as many nucs as i can with whats strong enough. After summer harvest make an many Nucs as i can, to overwinter in to 2018. Vape earlier than last year as soon as i can in August whilst numbers are high, well before the production of winter bees.
Raise good queens, not just lots of queens.(feed them better during production Phase this year)
Open up new mating yard at home.
Finish the season with at least 100 Nucs to overwinter and 180 production hives full.
Reflect and plan for 2018.

 

[JWF]

Trying not to get told off too much for buying more (apparently unnecessary) stuff in the sales!

 

[JWF]

Oh and get rid of one incredibly swarmy queen and her offspring, and move a couple of hives across to 14*12

 

[madasafish]

Maximising the Spring flow, raising queens and hoping for a summer harvest IF the weather is good... are my main objectives.

I tried queen rearing using cell punching# and eventually succeeded but the poor summer ruined much of the effort. I can start earlier this year with some expertise instead of being ignorant..

# my eyesight and tremors mean that grafting is a nogo...

 

[Erichalfbee]

some good photos of Russian tree beekeepers on the excellent Bee Photographer's website.

http://thebeephotographer.photoshel...of-the-cold/G0000dWY2F4IFeKw/I0000PoDoTAaEYXQ

Oh Tom they are beautiful photographs. Thank you for the link.
Double apologies to HM as that is exactly what he posted

 

[Stiffy]

Same as the past 10 years and never seem to achieve it!
like a good boy scout ........"Be prepared"

 

[Dave /Oscroft]

This year

Hi All,
I'm going try and get my head round queen rearing ! again! and work with BIBBA colleagues locally to breed out the imported queens and try and get to as near a black bee AMM as possible but this may take a number of seasons to accomplish.
Dave

 

[Hedgerow Honey]

Expansion to about 60/ get the queen rearing right/ Lot of fencing to be done.

 

[drex]

Intend to continue running nucs as brood factories a la Mike Palmer. A great success last year. Attending a Bibba course later this month, and will try some grafting for the first time. Have used various queen raising methods until now, but shied away from grafting. Just trying, in my own small way to improve on the stock I have. Bought in some buck fasts, some years ago, in my second year, but intend not to buy in anymore. Also intend to get my mentee to stand on his own two feet a bit more!

 

[Tremyfro]

I always have plans....but often have to moderate them...lol.
However, Plan A....to rearrange the Bee Yard to accommodate 4 Beehaus and 1 Dartington...along with the jumbo poly, Flow hive and a few nucs. Move the old Beehaus to the end of one the paddocks...beyond the electric fencing...to see if we can catch a swarm...he he.
That's the physical stuff. The rest is colony management. I want to run the long hives without supers this year...to utilise the other half...initially for sideways demarree and then for honey production. Therefore avoiding lifting and also splitting the colony during inspections.
It will be interesting seeing how that goes. I don't intend using queen excluders either.

 

[user 15607]

Hopefully start a second apiary with my 4 overwintered nucs, they will be going into Paradise poly hives.

 

[Jthebeek]

I hope to build and trial 8 frame national deeps and see if they are practical for me. Other than that I intend to downsize in the spring as last year was far too mental.

 

[linoleum bonypart]

You could use Payne's nucs for that

 

[Erichalfbee]

Nice robust box with the feeder taken out

 

[george]

I still have 6 colonies to move from Bucks to Suffolk in the next month or so.
Bailey my last few Nats onto either Commercial or 14x12s. Favouring commercial I think ?
Converting 80 odd supers from wired to unwired as I don't have easy access to my bee farmer friends extractors now without a 110 mile drive .
Make use of my nuc boxes this year without fail !!

 

[Portreath_Bees]

Finally buy a few hives and some bees after wanting to keep bees for 10 years but not being settled enough. Course done, literature read, other beekeepers followed so looking forward to it

 

[Fusion_power]

I want to build up to 30 square Dadant hives with 32 mm frames and double queens while still producing a crop of honey from the colonies I currently have. Basically this will triple my beekeeping and honey producing capacity.

I haven't even thought yet about building hive stands. I will need at least 3 more stands capable of holding 4 colonies each. I will make them portable so they can be moved as needed.

Each colony that I set up with brood chamber, frames, foundation, top, bottom, 2 shallow supers, Killion deep bottom, and hive stand costs about $200 U.S. I will have at least $6000 tied up in new equipment by the time I get everything complete. I will also have tied up at least 2000 hours of my time which if I paid myself a reasonable wage.... oh well, forget that, the bees have to make honey to pay for the equipment, my labor is just a required input.

 

[Finman]

I want to build up to 30 square Dadant hives with 32 mm frames and double queens while still producing a crop of honey from the colonies I currently have.

Basically this will triple my beekeeping and honey producing capacity.

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You should move the hives to better pastures. You could get 3 fold yield in your climate.

If you double your hives in recent pastures, your yield will drop to half.

Put hives in different places and compare the yields. You will see a miracle.
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