Actually The variation is turning my weakness as a beekeeper Into a strength as a hive producer. When I got my nucs, 2 were very strong and I should have paid more attention to them. When I put them into hive bodies they both covered about 8 frames. After about 2 weeks all ten frames (five from the nuc and five foundation.) were drawn out and full. I didn't catch it in time and when I went to put the second hive body on, I found queen cells every where. I put the queencells and several frames from the offending hives as well as some frames from the other three hives and put them into five nuc boxes I was making, voila five hives and five nucs. I had decided earlier to replace some queens in other hives but when they came in I put them in the nucs because the weather was bad and was forcast to be so for a week or so, and I figured it would be easier than trying to find the old queens in a steady drizzle. Now I have five hives pulling out their second hive bodies, and five nucs with laying queens on drawn frames. To make a long story short, my wife called me at work a couple of weeks later and said one of the nucs swarmed. It was lunch time anyway so I came home and moved the nucs into hive bodies and put the swarm in a nuc. While I was hiving the nuc that swarmed I cut out four queen cells and put them with frames from all of the other hives into nucs. Now to the present I have five douple deeps, five single deeps, and five nucs. I haven't checked the nucs lately because I've been out of town all week, I should have kept better track of the dates I hope theyre laying this week. I forgot to mention I've been feeding like crazy. Over 150lbs of sugar so far. On a side note. 2 years ago I had one hive in my back yard. I was really too busy for bees and had neglected it for several years, I didn't even check inside it for nearly 2 years. At some point it requeened itself and became very nasty and for the first time passersby (read: wife,dog,kid,meter reader, wife) were getting stung just walking by. My yard is very small, about 1100 square feet, and the gate was about 4 feet from the front of the hive. I recieved a very firm request to move the hive to my dads house. During that process I rememberd how much I love beekeeping and told my wife I'd like to start again and would only keep hives in the back yard for feeding while they were getting established then I would move them. She complained about one and got fifteen, bet she doesn't do that again :lol: .
Greg
P.S.
I'm not totally stupid, I'm moving the double deeps to an outyard this weekend.