It is nice to get a break from day to day bee work that happens in the spring, summer, and fall. But, the work continues of making and repairing equipment during the off months. I enjoy the work because along with the work you think of the strategies or plans you set out to do the next spring. What worked well and what to never do again cross your mind. I was extremely happy with the some of the break throughs we had this year. One being- raising the the amount of virgin queens to mated queens , to make up nucs. For me I had a couple new techniques that helped. A egg incubator, and making weekly grafts. Previously, I had a lot of froze unhatched queen cells that never hatched out because of cold spring nights or not enough bee heat in the queen mating nucs. The incubator solved that problem and I put hatched out virgin queens in the mating nucs. Also, I decided to just do more grafting with the idea, that if only 50% made it back mated, I would be good. So, it worked, and I think I ended up at 60-70% by the end off the season. I am hoping by making more adjustments, to get over 80%.