Production planning means deciding how much of which product to make and with which colonies. Unplanned production divides a colony between competing aims and gives mediocre results in all of them.

The basic fact: products compete

Expecting everything from one colony in the same period is not realistic.

• A pollen trap cuts protein intake; brood rearing and therefore honey yield fall
• Royal jelly production keeps the colony queenless or half-queenless and wears it down
• Venom collection leaves the colony agitated for days
• Queen rearing draws on the strength of the best colonies
• Comb honey lowers total yield; the bees rebuild wax each time

Colonies should therefore be assigned to roles.

Assigning colonies

A simple division suffices for most operations:

• Honey colonies: The strongest; used for nothing else
• Production colonies: Pollen, propolis or royal jelly
• Breeder and drone colonies: Selected lines
• Starters and finishers: For queen rearing
• Nucs: Reserve and growth

Each colony's role should be set at the start of the season and recorded.

Criteria for choosing a product

• Market: Do not produce what you cannot sell. The market for royal jelly and drone homogenate is narrow
• Equipment: Products needing a cold chain require investment
• Labour: Royal jelly and pollen are labour-intensive
• Forage: Propolis needs resinous plants; pollen needs variety
• Climate: Multi-purpose production is hard in a short season

Clashes of timing

The thing most often overlooked in planning is that jobs fall in the same week.

Queen rearing coincides with swarm checks; both are labour-intensive. Harvesting and the late-summer Varroa treatment chase each other.

When drawing up the season plan, map the workload week by week; where weeks clash, move one job forward or back.

Quality or quantity

As scale grows, quality gets harder to hold. A few good products are both more profitable and better for reputation than many mediocre ones.

This is particularly true in queen rearing and in single-flower honey claims.

Records

Record the role, the quantity produced and the time spent for each colony. Only in the second year does it become clear which product actually pays.