Repost from [mtbakerbees] How to manage splits

[Mohan Raj]

This came up recently in a discussion with new beekeepers and I think there has been a discussion on this board as well? The new beekeepers were confused because there are so many different ways of creating and managing splits.

 

You know that old adage, "ask 5 beekeepers get 10 answers"?? I don't believe it! If you ask a question, and include in your question your goals, you generally only find one right answer.

 

The question that was troubling this group was that the standard advice is to create a split and then move it at least a mile or two away for a few days, as this prevents any mature foragers in the split returning to the mother hive, leaving the split forager-less. But most of my new beekeepers here in the Vancouver BC area are urban beekeepers and have no second location to move the split to. And many work full time, so don't really have a ton of time to do all that as well. There are lots of reasons why moving splits is a pain.

 

I did move splits "out and back" as a new beekeeper. But at some point two issues came up: 1. I just had too much to do in the beeyard and quit moving splits; 2. I wanted to preserve ALL the mature foragers to the mother hive to field the largest possible forager force per hive for the blackberry flow.

 

So let's reframe the question to: "how do you manage splits such that you don't have to use the move out and back manoeuvre?"

 

1. Do as Michael does and split via the Snelgrove method. In Snelgrove, you do a vertical split (easy on space and equipment) where the mature foragers are constantly redirected down to the mother colony. When you take off the top box once their new queen is returned and laying, they have new foragers coming along and while you may want to give them supplementary feed for a bit, they are on their feet quickly.

 

2. Whether your split has the old queen (my preference) or is the half that has to raise up queen cells, you can keep it in the same yard as the mother hive IF you feed it until it has its own forager force. Foragers are 42 days old from the egg, and your split will keep its young bees who have not yet learned to orient and forage. So once you see decent orientation flights outside the split, you know they can forage for themselves. You can also monitor their stores and feed accordingly.

 

Hope that helps! Different split strategies have different advantages and disadvantages....which you choose really depends on which set of advantages gets you closest to your beekeeping goals.