What are your Beekeeping Aims for 2012?

[Neils]

I know, I know, counting chickens... well Beehives, before spring, I should have learned from last year's experience. But hey ho it's always fun to plan.

I've already tidied up my nature reserve apiary and if everything carries on as they are at the moment I'm intending to move another couple of hives onto there and use that, despite the fun and games getting a car down there as my main honey producing apiary.

The allotment should then only have a couple of hives in place and I intend to use that to raise queens and new colonies, it's quicker and easier for me to get to and more secure a place to be leaving Apideas lying around.

Right now, I have 3 14x12s and 2 Nucs. If they all come through I might look to raise one more colony this year, but now I want to consolidate at around 6 full hives for now, that's a comfortable number for the space I currently have and seems a nice round number to stick at for a year or so.

In an ideal world we'll have a nice season and I'll have more honey than I know what to do with (I can dream!)

From a personal point of view. I want to do Modules 2 and 5 and get my skills honed more than they perhaps are at the moment, nail artificial swarming once and for all, figure out queen rearing and get to the end of 2012 without spending another small fortune on yet more kit.

[Jon]

My main aim is to get the association apiary up and running properly with at least a dozen drone producing colonies.
We bought 10 brood boxes and 30 supers flatpack in the pre Christmas Thorne sale which are waiting to be assembled.
last year we whipped up a lot of interest in queen rearing and produced over 100 mated queens so we should be able to build on that and get more people involved.

Personally, I will probably buy a few more apideas. You can never have too many.

[chris]

After not managing to get any bees into a Warré for someone else, I'm intending setting up a couple of Warré hives myself. I've found a new site for them, away from the villagers but even so, have no intention of pouring in the bees. I've decided to work with frames (to begin with at least) so in the spring I'll be putting some Warré frames, wired inside Dadant frames, into my stronger Dadant hives, and then transfering these in a "classic" split.

[madasafish]

My aims are: breed from My Buckfast queen and requeen Carnies as they were persistent swarmers last year.
Finish building honey press in garage.
See how my Warre hives survived winter vs TBHs.

Assist Association apiary.


Count my stings.

[Neils]

The Warre invasion continues :) be interesting to hear your thoughts on how your bees get on in them compared to a TBH Mad.

I'll add that I'm contemplating making a few Nucs available, depending on what happens with the allotment colonies, but I'd really like to spend at least another year before thinking about selling on Nucs, I don't want to be (another) "that guy who sold rubbish bees", but if I get to that stage I know enough people I'd trust to give me proper opinion as to whether I'm doing it right.

[Calum]

Assuming all 21 colonies make it, I'll be selling all but 8 or ten.
The colonies I keep will all need new queens.
I want to put 30 colonies in to overwinter. I also want to train two other beekeepers in queen raising (with the Jenter system) and I have another that is just starting out, he wants to start with four and aims to overwinter 10. I will show him the ropes and try to help him acheive that target.
I want to send 10 virgin queens to the local queen mating 'island' (its a high valley in reality).
Keeping the club website (http://www.bienenzuchtverein-lindau.de/)up to date or even improving it, and finding two new members is I think enough to start with...