Just spent 3 hours replanning my bee empire. Think I figured a way to hit 300-350 colonies spending 25k on hives, frames, and queens. Might even make enough honey once I harvest the dead outs next spring to double my money if I can pull this off. Going to put my 21 new 8 frame shitty commercial nucs I'm buying in the remote pastures and pull splits from them aggressively in April leaving pretty much just the queen and one frame of honey and the field force. I'll add the expensif old sol queens and bee weaver queens to the splits and move to surround my central mating yard. So I'll need to spend like 5k on queens. Then I'll split all those a month later and move the splits to 60+ hives made of 2x6 lumber for cheap. Then right before the summer solstice June 15th I'll make 150 more splits into more cheap ass hives. That will then give 300 colonies 3-4 months to make enough honey to hopefully make it thru the winter on huge lazutin frames. Hoping the large frames with lots of honey above the clusters helps them stay warm like in Russia where they use this style. My 10 survivor layens colonies I should be able to split twice as well getting them to 40-50 colonies. If I have 30% survival, I should be able to be at 400 colonies by May of next year and they will have a full season to bring in more honey then I'll probably be able to sell. Like 20k lbs of treatment free honey and comb honey that I should be able to sell for a premium. So 10k in credit card interest expense to hopefully make 200k back from the risk 18 months later. If things go well I might even get a decent enough comb honey crop this summer to pay off the debt. Kinda just depends on weather and how well they do. Should get an operating loan, but hoping I can dig out by end of summer so not worth the hassle.