Splitting

[Jessica Kruger]

Hi everyone,

I have one seemingly strong hive currently in two deep boxes. Would you recommend splitting this hive in its second year and if so does anyone have any preferred methods/recommendations?

Thanks!

Jess

[Amir Bayazitov]

Jessica,

 

Unless you see queen cells in the hive, splitting or not depends on your goals: expansion vs honey production.

If you want more honey, then you just add supers. The stronger hive the more honey you get. You just need to monitor for queen cells.

If you want more bees/hive, then split. Considering that you have only one hive, I would recommend the easiest walk away split: make sure that both deeps have eggs and young larvae, move one of the boxes to different location adding bottom and top. You do not need to find queen, as it doesn’t matter in which hive she ends up.

Few days later check if one of the hives has queen cells.

You may add second deep to any/both hives as soon as bees cover 70-80% of frames.

 

But, if you see queen cells now (queen cells, not just queen caps), then you need to do immediately do artificial swarm or something like that.

 

Thanks,

Amir

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[Mike Garvey]

As an added note on this method of split, the hive that is moved will, after a day, have fewer bees since the foragers will all return to the original hive location.  You can equalize this, if you want to, by waiting a week or so and then swapping the hives' location.  You need, however, to make sure that you don't interrupt the mating flights of the new queen; she needs to come back to the hive that she departed from.  From egg to emerged queen takes about 16 days, so minimal disturbance is strongly advised when you are near the emergence date.

 

As for distance, you can move the hive a long way (>2-3 miles) and you won't have the forager-returning-to-the-original-hive effect OR you can move it a few feet/yards as your apiary permits.

 

Mike

[John Sallay]

Amir and Mike provide great advice. on splits. If you decide to go down the path of splitting your colony, you might want to watch this 20 minute video by Paul Kelly, who runs the apiaries for the University of Guelph. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwGWN0AyoFg  He demonstrates three different ways of splitting a hive.

One thing I would highlight is that if you split your hive now, neither half will be at full strength for the necctar flow that is just starting. To circumvent this issue, you could buy a new queen (for example, from Rick Reault at NE Bees http://www.nebees.com/) and introduce it into the side without the old queen (after 24 hours).

As a general matter, the beekeeping videos on the University of Guelph website (http://www.uoguelph.ca/honeybee/videos.shtml) are excellent -- authoritative, well-made, easy to follow, and worth watching. While there is a lot of absolute beekeeping junk on YouTube, so you have to be careful, this set of beekeeping videos is terrific.

John