Everyone is telling you the truth about their own bee yard.
Every method came out of the apiary that produced it — the latitude, the colony count, the winter, how much variance that operation could absorb before it hurt. None of that context travels attached to the advice. This one is a peninsula yard at 45°N, and everything here says where it comes from.
That box is the key to everything else on this site. Those are the facts you need in order to interpret my advice — not background, not credentials. Stationary bees at 45°N, wintered outdoors in two deeps and a medium under a condensing lid, from open-mated queens I grafted off stock I watched perform in this yard, on thirty to fifty colonies I treat deliberately and monitor year round. Every recommendation on this site came out of that system and is only tested inside it. Where your answers differ from mine, some of what follows will not apply to you, and it is worth knowing which parts.
A sustainable apiary
Reach and hold a state in which bees are not purchased year to year: raise the queens, make the increase, winter enough colonies to replace losses out of your own stock.
Two things follow from that. First, the ability to expand or contract the apiary at will — more colonies next spring, or fewer, without buying anything and without it being a setback either way. Second, and slower, the genetics move. Selecting each year from stock that came through this winter, in this yard, on this system, walks the bees toward a strain adapted to the climate and the management they actually live under.
The season, in four phases
Cluster holds. No intervention beyond oxalic acid vaporization during broodless periods. Heft and observe.
Assess, expand, treat, and make increase. Swarm pressure is building.
Population at maximum and swarm pressure peaks in June. Supers on, swarm control, honey.
The decisive phase. Mites treated, winter bees made, stores set, hive configured.
Bees and instruction
Nucs
Five-frame nucleus colonies, built here, picked up here. No transit, and someone ten miles away who answers the phone in June. Help getting them into the hive if you want it.
See the specWorkshops
Small groups, hands in a hive, one skill each. Free to Door County Beekeepers Club members.
Dates and topicsArticles
| Phase | Window | Title |
|---|---|---|
| PH IV | Early August, before you treat. Again after, to verify. | How to do an alcohol wash The skill the rest of mite management is built on |