Worldwide Beekeeping

Beekeeping => General Beekeeping => Topic started by: Bakersdozen on May 18, 2020, 09:30:07 am

Title: Walk Away Splits
Post by: Bakersdozen on May 18, 2020, 09:30:07 am

Does anyone here do walk away splits?  Have you had any success with a walk away split?  I am referring to making a split with one or more capped queen cells.  I had always heard they were risky.
Our weather may have been a factor in getting 50% success.  We have experienced 3 frost warnings one month after our annual frost free date.

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: iddee on May 18, 2020, 11:59:57 am

With swarm cells, my success has been nearly 100%.

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: neillsayers on May 18, 2020, 03:36:41 pm

B13,
 In the past I have had good success with swarm cells. This year I have had a miserable time. I suspect it was due to really bad flying weather for mating flights. If I suspect that is the problem, I add another frame of eggs. Check back in ten days. Rinse repeat..... Sometimes I get surprised and find that the new queen was just taking her good time getting started.
 I started with six hives this spring. Got ten going so far and one in process of requeening.  :)

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: Bakersdozen on May 19, 2020, 08:59:04 am

Yes, I should have stated it was swarm cells I was talking about. 

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: Zweefer on May 20, 2020, 09:04:05 am

last year i was a little slow in checking and found several swarm cells in the hives. i made splits, and had 7 out of 8 go without a hitch.  The last one ended up queenless, and had to be shook out, so 87% success rate?

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: Mikey N.C. on May 20, 2020, 05:55:45 pm

Zweefer,
Why did u shake out ? Laying works ?
I do news paper recombine

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: Zweefer on May 20, 2020, 10:07:03 pm

Exactly- I ended up with at least one laying worker - multiple eggs on the sides of the comb, all capped drone... not worth trying to fix when I wasn’t really expecting to have that hive to begin with.  :-X

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: Jen on May 21, 2020, 12:17:17 pm

It all depends on our weather up here in upper northern Calif. We have long severely sporadic springs. But frankly, I find any kind of queening precarious.

Title: Re: Walk Away Splits
Post by: tecumseh on May 26, 2020, 07:36:38 am

a walk away split is something I discourage for novice beekeepers. < the reason here are 1) with small numbers you are encouraging inbreeding and 2) the weather and season is the largest variable in if you have success or failure.  success is great but failure can work out to be absolute.   it is one thing to get queen cell properly made and another thing to get that queen properly mated.