I did it my way! (sorry Frank)

[Jen]

Scott- "Another aspect I have noticed is that I worry less.. with 4 hives, ten hives and 17 hives I was constantly concerned about problems and losses. I am much less distraught when i find a hive that has problems now. I have the ability and resources to replace it or fix it, or combine it! So having 45 hives has actually made the enjoyment of beekeeping greater.

      I hear ya on this one, I thought it was just worry wart me 

[apisbees]

That point/place came to me at 67.....................And I don't mean hives.      :'(

As Iddee's post points out we need to keep our hobbies with in our health limits some of us younger (50's and less) can still handle the hoisting of full deep supers, Some are down sizing to mediums, shallows, or 8 frame supers. I run a mix of deeps and mediums I prefer the deeps less pieces to handle and time involved in extracting. The day will come when I will (or my back) pick the mediums to use as I will not want to be carrying the full deeps. I have a lot of friends that ran 250+ hives but due to age have settled into under 100 hive and drawing their pension. I was talking to a friend that use to run over 500 with him and his girlfriend he said he had semi retired and so sold off most of his hives. I asked if he had taken up gulf, his reply "Bees are my hobby Keeping 75 hives is nice when the number gets up to 100 it becomes work. Keep in mind that he has all the equipment needed to run a operation of a 1000 hives lifters, fork lifts, auto uncapper, and extractors.

[Perry]

Great posts.
Each person has to make the judgement call as to their comfort zone with colony counts. I am very much concerned with getting to the size that the joy of it all begings to wane. I feel lucky to have found this thing, and I do not want to do anything to ruin that. Profit can be measured in more than just $$$.
Scott made a great point about not being upset when finding a hive that's doing poorly. I found the same thing, that knowing you have the ability to boost or combine takes some of that stress away.

[Perry]

Hey LazyBkpr, sorry I didn't respond quicker.
Given that I didn't move any hives into pollination this year, I guess all my hives are production hives. I went after nuc sales this year, and after pulling those, everything was set up for honey.
I came through winter with 48 colonies out of 51. I've sold 60 nucs, and now have my hive count to somewhere around 65-68, and still have 5 nucs and a trap-out going.
Once the nucs were pulled I just started supering. Now everything was not even across the board. Some hives I pulled 3 nucs off, and others none. Same as honey, I have had some hives with their 4th super on, and others with 2, with the second hardly being touched yet. Learning how to equalize is something I will have to fine tune.
As far as overwintering nucs, the ones I did last fall were a last minute thing, done more out of not knowing what else to do with them. They were overwintered as 5 frame nucs in D.Coates boxes, with most only having 3 or 4 frames of bees. 4 of the 6 made it to March, the early dead ones only had a smaller numbers of bees to start out so no surprise. I put a shim and fondant on them and they ate it all up twice. I lost the best one by getting to it late and it had started building and before I noticed it starved. I would say in all honesty that the over all results were less than successful. I would really like to try a 5 over 5 setup and I have 4 nucs right now that are busting out and will get their second box instead of being moved to singles. This would be a much more honest try at overwintering.

[Yankee11]

lazybkpr,

I noticed that too as I went from17 to around 50 this year. It's like, oh well they swarmed, shrug. I've always got nucs going, trap outs, queens etc,
Just a matter of mixing and moving things around,

Fret much less at 50 than 17.

[iddee]

15 years ago, I would overwinter 5 or 10, sell 40 or 50 nucs/hives in the spring and summer, then overwinter 5 or 10 again.
Now I am down to wintering 2 to 4, selling 15 to 30, and wintering 2 to 4 again. The years creep up on you fast, so keep it in the fun range.

Giving them away adds to the pleasure, also. To 14 Year olds, or there abouts, scouts, 4-h, and others who qualify in my opinion.

[lazy shooter]

15 years ago, I would overwinter 5 or 10, sell 40 or 50 nucs/hives in the spring and summer, then overwinter 5 or 10 again.
Now I am down to wintering 2 to 4, selling 15 to 30, and wintering 2 to 4 again. The years creep up on you fast, so keep it in the fun range.

Giving them away adds to the pleasure, also. To 14 Year olds, or there abouts, scouts, 4-h, and others who qualify in my opinion.

It's nice to see you are helping some kids along.  They are our future, and giving them an opportunity to work with something has to be beneficial to all of us.

[LazyBkpr]

Thanks Perry..   Overwintered in 5 frames..  wow! I imagine they did need fondant, but I am still impressed.
   I have twelve nucs going at the moment, and it looks like two more to change over from 10 frame boxes..   Four in four frame side by sides with top boxes.. Michael Palmer style nucs..  Four in 5 frame side by sides and four in standard 5 frame nucs with top boxes slid together side by side.  They are a bit of a struggle to keep managed. I have to check on them weekly and usually remove one or two frames of brood weekly to keep them from overpopulating.. the advantage has been that the slower colonies, and the ones that requeened late are catching up fast..  Next spring I can easily see making nucs from nucs and keep the production colonies as strong as possible..  Just need to see how many I can pull through the winter.
   Thanks for the reply, that helped, and is encouraging. I figure if you can do it up there in the frozen north it should be a cakewalk down here... right?   
   
   I need to go see Iddee, and figure out how to pull 40 or 50 nucs from 5-10 hives and still have them strong enough to overwinter!! Pulling three or four nucs in the spring I seem to struggle to get those hives back to strength.   Of course... he lives down south in the lands of milk and HONEY..   

[iddee]

Remember, Scott, most my profit was made from cutouts and trapouts. Selling nucs and hives was just icing on the cake. That's why I could give so many away.

[lazy shooter]

Perry has something else going for him.  His wife.  He can always rent her out as a snow shoveler. 

Seriously, I admire you guys that make a living out of agriculture.   I was raised on a ranch, and after finishing college, I could never think of a way to make a living out of agriculture, but I always thought of row crops and cattle.  The land costs of starting with cattle and row cropping is just way too much for most people.  (the ones without rich parents)  Bees, on the other hand allow one to be in agriculture without owning a couple of million dollars worth of land.  Bees are cool.

[apisbees]

To add to lazyshooters comment. And equipment we start of small and increase our hives one at a time so to speak so we can let the profits finance our expansion. equipment can be upgraded one piece at a time as new larger capacity equipment is needed. a building for a honey house will be one of the largest outlays when you get to the point where one is needed.

[Slowmodem]

I was raised on a ranch, and after finishing college, I could never think of a way to make a living out of agriculture, but I always thought of row crops and cattle.

Hopefully in the near future,  there will be more crops that are legal and more lucrative.