Managing hives, in its simplest form, is about weighing pros and cons, and leading your odds of success in your hives direction. This means making blind choices based on statistics. Now, anyone can throw money at the stock market, but those who make money (as they tell me) are the ones who know how to read and understand statistics in the market. In beekeeping, a blind choice is not really a blind choice, it is a decision made off of understanding risk and reward, cause and effect, timing and seasons. You become the omniscient reader of the season, year, and history of the colony in an effort to make the best decision for your individual hive.

Your options decrease as the season progresses

The tipping point in management in my books is August 1 of every year in the prairies. This is the point where you need to have a plan in place for that colony: steer the same direction or change your strategy. I don’t like to naturally requeen after August 1, but it’s not impossible. It’s important to keep an eye on the calendar and climate patterns of your area. Here are a list of common options for late summer management choices:

  1. Do nothing. Pull honey, compress hives, and put in to winter
  2. Requeen the colony with purchased stocks for a fresh queen in to winter
  3. Allow for hive to raise own stock. Requeen the colony with a queen less cycle.
  4. Use your own queen stock to requeen the colony. This does not necessarily include a queen less cycle in the colony but means you have to be prepared to raise queens in advance
  5. Split to increase winter numbers with purchased stocks, divide hives to ensure you can recover from potential winter losses
  6. You can split to increase winter numbers with queen less cycle, allow hive to raise own stocks in splits and recover from potential winter losses
  7. Split to increase winter numbers with personal stocks, this does not necessarily include a queen less cycle in the colony but means you have to be prepared to raise queens in advance

If this hasn’t crossed your mind before, then you may be feeling overwhelmed. This is where you want to break down the season, hive and skills with a SWOT analysis.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

If you can work through these questions and come out with a strong understanding of what is available to you, the bees, and the season, you are going to be able to make strong decisions.


If you are have been raising your own queens to requeen your hives, here’s a handy flowchart to keep on hand in case anything goes awry.

Raising Queens: Figuring Out What Went Wrong