Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Beekeeping 101 => Topic started by: riverbee on January 23, 2014, 12:36:17 pm
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many of us are new to beekeeping, and there seems to be some apprehension and questions on dividing hives. here is a good article that discusses basic methods of spring divides. first and foremost, decide the purpose of the divide and what do you want to accomplish? swarm management, increase (more bees), honey production (more honey) or other reason. i know some might say, i just want to know how to divide a hive..... but these are important factors, and your decision will also be based on your hives. there are many ways to divide hives, this article discusses some basic methods that work well.
from the article:
"before going into the apiary, you need to decide what purpose you have in mind for these new splits. Are they for swarm prevention? Will they go into honey or queen production? Are they to be sold off? Or, are they just more pets to look after? There are slight differences when making up the splits for each of the above cases. Also, the strength of the original colony will play a role as well. They may not be strong enough to make splits yet, or so strong as to be able to make more than one."
here is the article:
SPLITS FOR DIFFERENT REASONS-BEE CULTURE (http://www.beeculture.com/storycms/index.cfm?cat=Story&recordID=755)
i may employ one or more method when dividing hives, and it is always based on the criteria i mentioned above, purpose, goal, colony strength and health. this is my method of madness when it comes divides in spring.....i use one of or all 3 of these methods for divides. also i use all double deeps.
#1. with the strongest colonies, i may do an equal divide, so if i have 5 strong colonies to divide, i wind up with 10, and the queen-less box gets a purchased caged queen. everything is divided equally between. i just take the top deep off , set it next to the bottom deep and proceed to divide the frames equally, and maybe shake some extra nurse bees into the deep i am dividing into. you want make sure both boxes have enough nurse bees. feed.
#2. maybe i don't want an equalization and 5 more hives, maybe i want to keep a colony or other colonies strong for the honey flow and some comb honey but divide it enough to keep her from swarming. this requires a bit of knowledge of what's in your hives. i'll take a deep (or two, etc..., or maybe some nuc boxes) and i'll gather 3-5 frames of brood of all stages, maybe from one hive, or collectively from the strong hives, meaning a frame or two from hive 1, a frame or two from hive 2, etc....and frames of pollen and honey, also removed from each of the various hives, and extra shakes of nurse bees. you want to make sure there are enough bees to cover the brood. so, a mini deep if you will (light divide). this new hive deep gets a caged queen, and feed. this is also a good way to utilize bees to draw foundation. * a note on this, i use 9 frames in my deeps rather than 10.
#3. nucs. i use 5 frame nuc boxes. so, 2 frames of brood all stages, a frame of honey, a frame of pollen, and an empty drawn frame. shakes of nurse bees. caged queen. feed.
fire away any questions, or contribute how you divide your hives, or would teach another.
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Thank You riv- Yes! I am still a little apprehensive, I think this article will help a lot!
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I'm hoping to divide a hive this spring. I have never done it, but it doesn't look too difficult. That was a good article. Thanks for the link!
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i still remember dividing hives for the first time, i was very apprehensive, was afraid of squashing the queen, didn't want to mess up moving the frames around, was afraid of putting a new queen in, and many other questions/fears in my mind. it really is not difficult, and once done, you will say to yourself, that wasn't so hard! and you will gain confidence the next time around and with each spring season. then become 2nd nature. also you will be excited and impatient to see that divide or divides you did grow into a thriving colony/colonies.....pretty cool. that's the reward!
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Since you will very likely want to find the queen I would suggest that you get into the hive as early as the weather permits and find her and mark her if she is not. There will be a whole lot less bees to deal with then than later.
I had one hive I simply could not find the queen in after going through twice plus dumping them on the ground in front of the hive with a queen excluder on the bottom. She may have gone into the hive next door as the boxes were close together.
Another suggestion depending on the type of queen and the type of cage, decide whether you want to discard the accompanying workers, and ensure the release candy passage is stuffed full not nearly empty. That will affect queen release time. If you are putting a queen with some russian and carn blood into a italian hive they may need a little extra time for assured acceptance. I made up a queen muff so I could work in without worrying about the queen flying off.
Riverbee could likely give you some advice with that type of bee!
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Crofter- ""Since you will very likely want to find the queen I would suggest that you get into the hive as early as the weather permits and find her and mark her if she is not.""
I don't know how to do that. That would make a good thread of it's own...
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well of course there is no law that say you really have to find the queen.
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well of course there is no law that say you really have to find the queen.
If you want to put a new queen in one half or both halfs wouldn't you want to find the old queen to keep new queen from being killed.
If a walk away split wouldn't it be best to leave the queenless part with more stores and perhaps at the original location.
What measures should you take when you cant locate the queen?
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Crofter- ""If you want to put a new queen in one half or both halfs wouldn't you want to find the old queen to keep new queen from being killed.""
Still trying to puzzle piece your three questions, so I'll start with the first.
I think I would try very hard to find the original queen. In my case she's only 1 year old and doing a good job. Then, the queenless half I would buy a queen for it. But that is an ideal situation.
Then, another senario that I read on this forum was to put the queen in the second split with brood and eggs. Then the first part of the split is already set up with eggs and brood, and possibly new queen cells.
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When I did the splits last year I put a new mated queen in each one, so I needed to find the old queens which I pulled out and used to start small nucs with.
If you have difficulty finding the old queen in a double deep you want to split, you can go ahead and divvy the frames up in the two boxes so they each have roughly the same numbers of frames of brood, pollen, honey and empty drawn comb. If you find the queen during this that is good, If you do not find her, place a queen excluder over the lower box and place the other box on top. Go back in 4 days and see which box has eggs and you will know where the queen is. Introduce your new queen to the other box after checking thoroughly that they haven't started building queen cells.
It is claimed that you can tell be the sound of the bees when a hive is queenless but with my mucked up hearing it doesnt seem to work for me.
It probably would be a good thread to start on methods of finding the queens and work arounds when you cannot find her.
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I can usually find the queen now.. was a time I couldnt... Helping another beek find/catch queens he needs to ship or deliver is AMAZING practice.. After a time, your eye is DRAWN to her, and I have found myself staring at the queen without realizing what I was looking at for several moments. Read from another thread.post/forum...
Early splits I like to do into Nuc's with the old queen. I like doing strong nuc splits, it leaves the old hive Strong, yet removes enough bees and the old queen so they will think they swarmed. Have plenty of room to regrow and produce a good honey crop...
A queen excluder over a nuc box, with an empty box on top helps.. I shake all the bees off the frames in one box. into the other brood box. Set that box aside. 5 frames go into the nuc. Preferably filled frames. three with brood of all ages and stages, one honey, one pollen.
So at this point, we have a box missing 5 frames. Usually a mid box, but it really doesnt matter. Shake three full frames of nurse bees into the nuc. Check for queen on the excluder... Remove excluder, put top box back on the nuc and put 5 drawn, empty comb from the sides of the hive you are working into the top nuc box, (NO BEES) cover, make sure its well ventilated and the entrances are screened and set aside.
I take the now empty box, place the replacement frames in it.. if I am swapping frames about, I shake them off, and put them where they will go in the boxes, insuring the one box is devoid of bees. Put the excluder on top of it, then proceed to shake bees and swap the frames to another empty box as I go until I find the queen running about on the top of the excluder. Catch her, usually in a queen clip and immediately transfer her to the nuc. I wait about four hours before installing the caged queen. I dont pull the cork on the candy side till the next day.
Remove Nuc to an outyard, or reverse the entrance and partially block so the bees reorient.
If you cant take the time to find the queen, using the excluder filter method works..
I would give credit to whoever posted that but I didnt copy/paste their name.. :sad:
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It is claimed that you can tell by the sound of the bees when a hive is queenless
Yep it does work, and in fairly short order most times.
The bees will make a "roaring" sound with their wings. Not sure but I think they are trying to fan pheromones around the hive to locate the queen.
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How do I know if my double deep hive has enough bees in it to make a split? All's I want to do is have two hives so I can have a back up system, and gleen some honey for myself.
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When we first started beekeeping, finding the queen was darn near an impossible task.
What helped us the most was making up a few five frame nucs. Then weekly, I would go find the queen in each one. After some practice you will get better at picking her out on a frame.
I always start by looking where the most bees are in the hive. Then hold each frame at arms length, looking at the whole frame rather than each bee on it. The queen being so much larger helps your eyes pick up her movements. Having marked queens simplifies to whole process. It took me awhile to pick up on the roar of a queenless stack.
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Jen, you can buy a nuc, or make a split and buy local honey. Your choice.
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Iddee- your answer was too cut and dried!
I need a 150 more replies before I can make up my mind :D
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How about if I just send you a jar of honey and you order a nuc. Then you can have the best of both worlds. :)
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This is going to be a long thread: 150 more posts! Can I post more than once?
I think Iddee is saying that if you split your hive you likely wont get honey from either split this year. You might be able to steal the odd frame but you will not leave them with enough stores for winter if you do. From my experience last season you will have to leave everything they make and still have to feed to get them to wintering weight. Granted it was a below average year. If you had 20 frames of fully drawn comb to add to the splits they might make a bit of surplus. That would be the case in my climate anyways.
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jen, true, divides sometimes do not make a lot of extra honey, but that doesn't mean you can't take out one frame of honey, for yourself that they do make. but just consider what that leaves them with. don't take anything away from them that they might need during a dearth or going into winter months, or be prepared to feed them to replace what you have taken. hope this makes sense.
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It is common practice in some areas to take almost all the honey and feed back 5 or 6 gallons of 2:1 sugar syrup but it takes some know how to do it without causing robbing or flooding the brood nest at the time the bees are doing the fall brood rearing. It has to be done early enough so the bees get time to get it in and dehydrated before it gets too cold. Simply putting 10 pounds of dry sugar on top of the frames wont do it.
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This leads me to believe that maybe I shouldn't split this year. Last fall during inspection, the brood box was full but not to capacity. And the top deep was full of honey but not to capacity. Didn't document these details.. Doh!
So maybe I should just not split this year and put honey supers on my double deep.... and also let the bees do more building in the double deep...
Does that make sense?
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Making a decision before time to split does not make sense. By then, you could have a beard covering the front of both hives or you could have 3 frames of bees.
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What Iddee Said..
The production hives I have will get split into Nuc's.. (as long as they are good and strong!) old queens going into those nucs, new queens going into the hives.
Taking only three frames of brood, one of pollen, one of honey should not set the production hive back by a great deal.. so long as the new queens are good queens.. and as I said, the hives are strong. Best of all, these hives should still make honey, and I have artificially swarmed them, so the new queen is not "likely" to swarm as long as I make sure they have room to grow.
The Nucs will get grown, hived, and hopefully build up well for the winter to make production hives next year.
So many ways to do it... This is one that has a good chance of getting you honey if we have a good spring/summer flow.
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Hey Lazy- I've been on forum most of the day. Information Overload! Gawd!
Re: How do I split from a deep to a medium
Iddee « Reply #10 on: Today at 10:54:46 PM »
If you look down at the top of two boxes, you have no idea if there is brood or honey. The adults need to be filling the between spaces fairly full before splitting.
If so, then you remove the frames and divide equally. If the adults are not covering nearly all empty space, the hive isn't strong enough to split by a new beek who doesn't want to chance losing both. After 10 years of beekeeping, and ready to lose half of them or more, then you may split one full deep into 5 hives. I just want you to be successful the first time.
I'm thinking that I may not need to split this year. On this thread Iddee gave some good advice on how to check in between the frames to determine if I have enough bees to split. I don't think I do. So I may just go for honey this year. Jury still out, but closer to a plan for this year
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Jen, relax. You have 60 to 90 days before time to split. Your queen can lay over a hundred thousand eggs in that time period. You cannot decide whether you can safely make a split at this time.
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hehe yep, what Iddee said again!!!
When you go open the hives for the first time they will most certainly look too weak to split. It will take the queen a bit to get the numbers cranked up. Normally, its not a matter of being able to split during a particular year, its more a matter of waiting for the right TIME to do the split..
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Siiiigh Okay! I guess... it's that my hive swarmed three times last year in about a 2 week period in late spring.
Trying to be ready to do the right thing at the right time
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If it is an established double deep that overwintered I think to prevent certain swarming you will have to pull some brood from them. It does not have to be a 50/50 split. You can take off a very small split with the old queen and let the main hive raise a queen. I think Bush calls it a cutdown split. There are varying degrees of split, not total or nothing.
What happened last year sounds like a swarm with several after swarms.
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They did not, and will not, swarm before the first 65 degree, sunny, calm day.
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a crofter snip...
If you want to put a new queen in one half or both halfs wouldn't you want to find the old queen to keep new queen from being killed.
tecumseh...
well yea you might want to but there is nothing that says 'you have to'. there are of course tricks that you can attempt* < I should add here as a matter of full disclosure that I generally always try to locate the queen and 'spotting the queen' is something I seem to have a a significant talent for but then again I have a large level of practice when it comes to this task.
*about the most simple trick anyone can try is an hour or so after splitting is to remove the lid from the split and set a mated queen in her introduction cage on the top bars at the center of the cluster with the screen wire pointed upwards. if the hive is queenless then the bees will quickly cover the queen's introduction cage and begin feeding the queen thru the wire and almost always in goodly numbers (ie more than one or two but almost always looks like a mob to me). if the unit is queen right the bees in the box will pay almost no attention to the queen in the introduction cage (maybe one or two may notice but not many and these will have almost no interest in feeding the queen in her introduction cage). if the timing of split prior to adding the queen cage goes much beyond 6 hours you also need to throughly check any split for queen cells < at least for me the most reliable reason why a mated queen is not accepted by a split is either a queen cell or a virgin queen < cells can be difficult to discover and virgin queens are several fold more difficult to locate than a mated queen.
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of course there are those who might suggest that 'thinking outside the box' may represent some advantage here. often time we are caught up in a decision of EITHER this or that, when if we did consider other options both might be possible.
not so long ago I did splits in the spring of the year because this is what bee keepers do. then at some point I had a bit of conversation with Michael Palmer about late summer and fall split and realized fairly quickly.... why not have both? < I should point out here that IMHO the earliest queen you can obtain are also likely not the best queens. often not considered in this question is the best type of queen are the ones that have been exposed to drones when drone numbers are the highest and when their nutrition is the very best <these two quality/quantity issues are quite unlike to take place early in the season.
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at least for me the most reliable reason why a mated queen is not accepted by a split is either a queen cell or a virgin queen
So if I do a split and let it sit overnight, then go and put a queen that is in a queen introduction cage into the queenless box, and they've built a queen cell during the night, you think when they released the queen from her cage that they would kill her?
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Is it completely irresponsible to split the hive 50/50 and not care where the queen ends up, one box or the other? And, let the queenless hive generate their own queen? I am seeing only one major drawback, losing nearly a month for the process.
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Dave that is called a walk away split. Don't much care for them either but for the most part they can be successful.
I have done splits like that but I do know where the queen ends up. I like to do one split and let them raise several queen cells, then harvest the cells for more splits.
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That's a good idea G. I might do that to just one hive so I can harvest some queens for further splits...
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"is it completely irresponsible to split the hive 50/50 and not care where the queen ends up, one box or the other? And, let the queenless hive generate their own queen? I am seeing only one major drawback, losing nearly a month for the process."
blue, like g said, this is a walk away split, and i am not a fan of them, the odds are against you that the colony will fail. a queen raised from a walkaway, if successful, you will be looking at about a 7 week delay, so anywhere between 49 and up to 60 days when the colony raises it's own queen. on the positive, varroa control because of the brood break, but costly in terms of colony buildup. to the raise a queen from viable larvae, emergence, maturation, mating (if successful) and egg laying, then 21 days for worker brood to emerge, and in the meantime your population will drop from this colony because no new bees are being born during this period of time. this can and does affect what resources come in the front door and comb building, and don't expect a honey crop the first year.
i think it is a great educational experiment to try at some point, too many variables that contribute to failure. i have done them in the past. my rate of success at this seems to lean more towards the failure side. not saying it doesn't work sometimes, but if it fails, then a beek is facing a different set of problems to remedy in the process; for example, if not 'managed properly', a diminished population of older bees, and possibly a requeening challenge.
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i think it is a great educational experiment to try at some point, too many variables that contribute to failure. i have done them in the past. my rate of success at this seems to lean more towards the failure side. not saying it doesn't work sometimes, but if it fails, then a beek is facing a different set of problems to remedy in the process; for example, if not 'managed properly', a diminished population of older bees, and possibly a requeening challenge.
I tried to do one once and it didn't take. I ended up with a good bunch of wax moths, though. :o
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thanks slowmodem your experience is exactly why I would never recommend this to a novice bee keeper. a couple of laps around the big oval to get the true feel of things and then the novice MAY be ready to try this procedure.
and yes I suspect in about 95% of the times when a queen is not accepted there is a queen cell, a queen or a virgin queen already in the box.
when thing really get going here and things are flying left and right and there is absolutely no time to get everything done it is also quite common for me to do splits (some times call totally destructive splits... in that a large hive is subdivided into many many parts) and if I do not find the queen I simply add a queen cell to each and every part without any notion of which part still has the queen. a few days later when I check to see if the cells have hatched the one part with the old queen is quite obvious based on which cell has been chewed down.
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Since I have considerable expierence in failed queen rearing attempts I though I would throw my 2 cents in here.
I started trying to make splits and let them raise a queen not long after I got my first bees. No mentor, just some books. When your first starting many of the things you read you think you understand but later realize you didn't.
Each time I lost a hive I tried to figure out what I did wrong. Instead of learning how to do it I learned how not to do it. I've developed some pretty strong opinions on the subject.
I believe this can't be completely taught, it has to be learned. I also believe its something every beekeeper needs to know.
Some of the things I've learned
To start with I never split from a hive that isn't strong.
You need lots of bees of the right age to build a good queen. If your building in a nuc 4 frames full of nurse bees is my minimum. 5 is better, 6 is better yet. Best is to let the hive build the new queen.
My best queens are born in July and Aug. Where I am the flow is over, the hives are boiling with bees. The 30 days I lose is of no consequence because there's no flow.
I only lose 30 days because unlike swarms the queen was laying right up until I pulled her. Only once have I not had eggs in 30 days. My Iddee queen took about 34 days.
If the queen doesn't make it back from her mating flights just combine the old one back in and try again in a month or so.
After you get the basics down you can get a couple mating nucs for those extra cells they made. Their kinda handy.
I suggest to every new beek that after the flow when your bees ain't doing anything productive anyway you start trying to Learn this. Expect lots of failures but you'll be a better beek at the end.
For me this is the most interesting part of beekeeping.
Good luck, and hang in there.
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:yah:
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Thanks for the hints there Scott. I will put them to good use.
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I suggest to every new beek that after the flow when your bees ain't doing anything productive anyway you start trying to Learn this. Expect lots of failures but you'll be a better beek at the end.
For me this is the most interesting part of beekeeping.
Good luck, and hang in there.
I had thought of trying a split this year in July or Aug. I tried it a couple of years ago and raised a good crop of wax moths.
In July, there's not much going on before the goldenrod. Do you suggest feeding splits, and what ratio of syrup?
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These late splits do have to be fed in order to be ready for winter. I feed internally and no HBH because these small hives are robber magnets. I keep the smallest entrance they can defend.
I just feed 1/1