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Timing is Everything!
So says the old adage regards success in life!
Be it sport, personal relations or business, timing is critical to success. In a yacht race the moments you choose to tack and gybe can mean the difference between crossing the line a winner or being a ‘tail-ender’. In cycling, boxing, wrestling, horse-riding or any other sport the timing of your key moves can make you either a superior strategist and winner or else an ‘also-ran’.
In share trading and investment knowledge of time dependent derivatives and their correct application can supercharge share earnings. Many wealthy individuals in realising this fact enhance their share earnings by selling time dependent call options over their share portfolios. As reported in The Australian[1] recently the Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet’s ‘…Berkshire Hathaway’s second-quarter result, announced at the weekend, was $US 3.3bn net compared with $US 2.88bn for the previous equivalent period, and owed a huge amount to derivatives contracts coming good. In the latest result, the gains from derivatives zoomed up from $US 698m to $US 2.36bn thus doing most of the heavy lifting’.
And so it is in time-dependent beekeeping, where knowledge of key time-dependent events and their successful utilization is critical to success. Much of an apiarist’s success depends on knowing
1) The life cycle of the three castes of honeybee (Figure 1)
2) The duration of each stage of each castes life cycle (Figure 1)
3) The likely flowering time of any anticipated honey flow to be worked
4) The likely period of swarming
5) A sound approach to disease control
6) A suitable method of re-queening each year
7) A suitable method of swarm control
8) A strategy to integrate this knowledge so as to synchronise apiary management so that each hive has a maximum population of field bees just before the honey flow arrives.
In a macro sense applying this strategy means estimating the honey flow period for your locality and timing your operations so that you ensure a maximum force of field bees at the time of honey flow.
This is achieved by working backwards from the estimated time of honey flow by the number of weeks necessary for eggs to be laid for foragers to be at their most active during the honey flow. Figure 2 illustrates an estimated hypothetical honey flow for late December/early January. If the queen lays egg batch B in the first week of October ie the week beginning October 1st, workers will emerge three weeks later on about 22nd October, will be nurse bees for approximately three weeks until 12th November and will possibly function as field foragers until approximately 24 December ie for about one week of the honey flow.
Using the same type of analysis for batch E laid on the 22nd October will provide a field force that will possibly forage during the entire honey flow.
Batch K laid on 3rd December will be no benefit in foraging during the honey flow – nor will any batch of eggs laid after that date. Any batch of eggs laid prior to 1st October will not contribute to the honey flow. Further analysis of this diagram in conjunction with Figure 3. will show that any stimulation of colonies will be best undertaken during the later half of October to early November.
Apiarists around the world vary greatly in their hive management styles from practically none to very involved systems, with a result that honey production per hive varies greatly from negligible to over 300kg per hive. About 90% of Australia’s managed hives produce in the range of 40-100 kg per annum but with some apiarists’ hives yielding much more than this. Regional variations, spectacular crops, varying weather conditions and extraordinary good luck play a part but some of it is due to a relatively small proportion of apiarists who have stumbled upon/researched their way to a collection of techniques which with exquisite timing enable them to produce volumes of honey many times the average. Their techniques include the judicious use of multi-entrance, screened division boards, two queen hives and the manipulation of other hive components at critically timed moments of spring build-up. Like the gurus of finance who excel at timing they are the apiary industry’s master beekeepers. They are the apiarists who can take over an apiary and multiply the apiary’s output without increasing hive numbers or alternatively decrease an apiary’s hive numbers while still maintaining product volume.
Their proficiency emphasises (1) that it is not what you do but how you do it and (2) that timing (and technique) is everything!
