Questions about splits

[Novice]

   I have a hive that I think is strong enough to split.  I have talked to a Beek in my area who will be doing walk away splits this coming weekend.  He advised me to do mine then too, and recommended a walk away split.  My question is: Is a walk away split the best type of split to do if you want to maintain production in the original hive?

[robo]

Personally I don't think walk away splits are ever the best type of split.   My blog is currently offline for a revamping,  so I have quoted a piece I wrote awhile ago about emergency queen.   These are my personal beliefs,  others may have different thoughts.  Also climate plays a large role in it as well.   The south has much easier winters than us northern folks, so you can squeeze by with so-so queens.

It’s springtime and a lot of folks are eager to expand their apiary by doing splits. Splits are very popular since they are “almost free”. Problem is, a good portion of those doing splits use the “walk away” method, because it’s easy and cheap, without thinking it through.

Bees will rear queens in three different circumstances. Swarm queens, supersedure queens, and emergency queens. Swarm queens are reared when a colony is booming, resources are plentiful, and the colony is ready to initiate a natural split. Swarm queens are reared out of desire and not out of need, and are also reared vertically in queen cups. Since swarm queens are initiated by bee when conditions are optimal, the results are quality queens.

Supersedure queens are reared when the colony is unhappy with the performance of the queen and decide to replace her. Supersedure does not consider availability of resource or drone population for proper mating. Supersedure queens are reared from eggs of an unacceptable and/or failing queen, therefore results are marginal at best. You will find some folks that say supersedure queen are perfectly fine. Just keep in mind, that although young supersedure queen may seem just fine, come fall, when the weather starts getting tougher is when the poor quality is most likely to show up. This also, coincidentally, is the worst time to have to try and requeen. I have also seen, and heard from many beekeepers, of hives that will perpetually supersede the queen. This leads me to believe that whatever quality of the queen the bees do not like is being passed through genetics.

Emergency queens are the worst case for the bees. They have no laying queen and the colony will perish if the situation is not rectified. There is no current queen so one is raised from eggs laid in worker cells. What differentiates a queen from a worker is the food that is fed to the larvae on or around day 3. This happens to coincide with the bees needing to get the larvae from the horizontal cell to the new vertical cell they build on the face of the comb. To get the larvae to the correct position, they float it out on thinned out royal jelly. Does this thinned out royal jelly have the same nutritional value? Right at the critical time of a larvae being either a worker or a queen. There may not be an abundance of resources for the bees to produce quality royal jelly and they just do the best they can. Out of necessity, they will attempt to raise multiple emergency queen in hope that one is successful. Any larvae that may be a little older (more than 3 days and didn’t continue to get feed straight royal jelly) will also be the first to hatch and kill all the younger, perhaps better quality, unhatched queens. I also often hear that bees will know and always select the right aged larvae. Out of desperation, bees will try and rear a queen from a non-fertile laying worker larvae (drone), so wouldn’t it be plausible they would attempt to rear from a slightly older than prime larvae? Are “good enough” queens OK, or do you want the best queens?

So next time you plan to do a split, either wait until you have some nice swarm cells, rear yourself some quality queens, or truly think through the long term costs before you write off a $20 quality queen as too expensive. Any beekeeper trying to deal with a late Fall/Winter queen failure would gladly drop $20 if given the chance for a do-over.

[blueblood]

A split in general can slow your production.  A walk away split is going to leave one hive without a queen which will take up to 30 days to get a new queen up and going.  Now, if you like the genetics of your target hive to split and you are patient, by all means leave them to their queen rearing from the eggs left.  However, personally, I would locate the old queen and put her in the nuc if she isn't that old and buy queen and introduce her in the old hive.  Or, if you have some queen cells in other hives that you like the disposition of, use them.

[riverbee]

greetings and welcome to the forum novice!

"My question is: Is a walk away split the best type of split to do if you want to maintain production in the original hive?"

my personal belief also, no it is not,  very good advice and post by robo.

again, welcome to the forum!!!

[robo]

if you want to maintain production in the original hive?

Any type of split you do now will negatively affect production of the original hive.

Personal,  I don't feel spring is the time for splits.   I do my splits in the late summer after the main flow and when the conditions are best for rearing quality queens.    If I was in your situation,  I would leave the original hive alone (watch for swarm cells and then split if needs be)  and put out swarm traps (not for your hive but from other colonies) if your looking to increase.  This will also increase the diversity of your stock.

[Jen]

Robo- Really good reading here.

Why is diversity a good thing? Because I really like my queen and keep thinking that if she is good then the bees will make another like her... 

[Novice]

 

[iddee]

But the new queen will have a different daddy than the old queen, so the new one will only be half like the old one. Then if the old one was from a swarm cell and the new one from an emergency cell, there may be a big difference from that aspect, also.

[robo]

Why is diversity a good thing?

Can I answer a question with a question?

When is inbreeding a good thing?

Without getting too deep in the scientific jargon,  I think here are a couple of quotations that can be explicitly applied to today's honeybee environment.

Organisms exist in environments that vary in time and over space. Such variation is often described in terms of the natural or historic range of variability (NRV, HRV) in environmental conditions such as weather, disturbance events, resource availability, population sizes of competitors, etc. (White and Walker 1997). If a group of organisms (say, a population of species X) were to live in a completely stable physical and biological environment, then a relatively narrow range of phenotypes might be optimally adapted to those conditions. Under these circumstances, Species X would benefit more by maintaining a narrow range of genotypes adapted to prevailing conditions, and allele frequencies might eventually attain equilibrium. By contrast, if the environment is patchy, unpredictable over time, or includes a wide and changing variety of diseases, predators, and parasites, then subtle differences among individuals increase the probability that some individuals and not others will survive to reproduce -- i.e., the traits are "exposed to selection." Since differences among individuals are determined at least partly by genotype, population genetic theory predicts (and empirical observation confirms) that in variable environments a broader range of genetic variation (higher heterozygosity) will persist (Cohen 1966; Chesson 1985; Tuljapurkar 1989; Tilman 1999).


A diverse array of genotypes appears to be especially important in disease resistance (Schoen and Brown 1993; McArdle 1996). Genetically uniform populations (such as highly inbred crops) are famously vulnerable to diseases and pathogens, which can (and do) decimate populations in which all individuals are equally vulnerable. Such uniformity also predisposes a population to transmit disease from one individual to another: instead of having isolated diseased individuals, nearly every individual may be exposed to disease by direct contact or proximity. More diverse populations are more likely to include individuals resistant to specific diseases; moreover, infected individuals occur at lower density, and thus diseases or pathogens may move more slowly through the population.

[LazyBkpr]

 In the time it takes me to figure how to say something Robo already said it better.. Remind me later not to argue with him!!

[Yankee11]

According to Mel Disselkoen and his OTS Queen Rearing. If you use this method at the right time.  You can split and actually get more honey from the mother hive. Once you get 8 frames of brood you remove 2 frames of brood along with the queen and put them in a nuc.

Notch 2 frames in mother hive and come back in 7 days. According to him this have will produce more honey because they don't have the brood to feed and will store the honey. He says it also helps with mite control, breaks the brood cycle. Also prevents swarms.

By notching the cells, it allows the queens to be raised vertical, same as swarm cells.

I may try this on a hive or 2 and see what happens.

[LazyBkpr]

According to Mel Disselkoen and his OTS Queen Rearing. If you use this method at the right time.  You can split and actually get more honey from the mother hive. Once you get 8 frames of brood you remove 2 frames of brood along with the queen and put them in a nuc.

Notch 2 frames in mother hive and come back in 7 days. According to him this have will produce more honey because they don't have the brood to feed and will store the honey. He says it also helps with mite control, breaks the brood cycle. Also prevents swarms.

By notching the cells, it allows the queens to be raised vertical, same as swarm cells.

I may try this on a hive or 2 and see what happens.

   I considered mentioning this, but I THINK he only has one hive..   Timing is important, and if anything goes wrong.... Does he have the resources to fix it if the virgin queen gets eaten on her mating flight, etc, etc..

[pistolpete]

If you do decide to split, then the walk away is not the best choice.  A walk away means you take one of the two deeps and put it on a new bottom board.   You would be much better off actually inspecting all the frames in the hive and selecting 3 really nice frames of brood at various stages and 2 really nice frames of honey and pollen.  Use those 5 frames to make a nice strong Nuc to install a purchased queen or give the nuc the old queen and let the parent hive raise a new one.    In the parent hive shove the rest of the frames to the middle and place new frames on the outside edges.

[tecumseh]

a snip...
According to Mel Disselkoen and his OTS Queen Rearing. If you use this method at the right time.

tecumseh...
this may well be true of where ever Mel Disselkoen rears bees but I would suggest very strongly that it does NOT apply to all landscapes.  a question.... If you have a very limit time frame for any nectar flow how can reducing the population by half and allowing the other half of the split population to steadily dwindle for a month how can this possibly enhance the honey crop???  < one half of the split population may consume less honey since it is producing no brood but the other half has no way of capturing a honey crop at all. 

[Novice]

Thank you all for your replies.  In reading over your advice, it seems to me that:

1.  Splits are okay, but a good nuc would be better
2.  Emergency queens are or could be inferior queens
3.  Best case is to purchase a queen and pull a 5 frame nuc.

I do have 2 hives, so would have resources available if an emergency were to arise, but the more I read the more I like option #3.

[skydiver]

I considered mentioning this, but I THINK he only has one hive..   Timing is important, and if anything goes wrong.... Does he have the resources to fix it if the virgin queen gets eaten on her mating flight, etc, etc..

     Not true I have been in some of Mels yards, he has many. Yes he has the resources  to fix problems but does not, when he makes up his nucs after cells are capped it is either a success or a failure. He make up and sells a lot of nucs using his method.

[robo]

Don't forget about swarm traps, they are also a great way to increase your hives for little to no cost.

[LazyBkpr]

I considered mentioning this, but I THINK he only has one hive..   Timing is important, and if anything goes wrong.... Does he have the resources to fix it if the virgin queen gets eaten on her mating flight, etc, etc..

     Not true I have been in some of Mels yards, he has many. Yes he has the resources  to fix problems but does not, when he makes up his nucs after cells are capped it is either a success or a failure. He make up and sells a lot of nucs using his method.

      I was talking about the OP not Mel.   

[tecumseh]

a snip followed by my > comments...

1.  Splits are okay, but a good nuc would be better > can be pretty much the same thing.
2.  Emergency queens are or could be inferior queens > maybe yes and maybe no.... the real unknown here is quantity of brood bee to create the queen cell and the food supply coming in the front door.
3.  Best case is to purchase a queen and pull a 5 frame nuc.   > I think for several reason (most at least mentioned in this thread) that a novice would be better served to buy a queen add some genetic diversity and not take the HUGE risk from a walk away split.  after a novice has a few more hives and such a risk would not totally endanger all his stock a walk away split might be something worthwhile to consider.  For myself buying and making queens (via cells) is simply a much less risky way of making increase.

and as a side topic... inbreeding is one of those things which at one time was a fundamental component of any bee breeding program.  within a closed population this allows you to increase the genetic material of whatever quality you are looking to promote.  this does of course come with a price which is the stock you are operating become increasing fragile.  with open population inbreeding the misalignment of sex alleles will make inbreeding quite obvious to anyone < these are lethal combination and will invariable result in a brood patter that appears quite spotty and the larger the degree of inbreeding the more spotty the brood pattern will become.

[apisbees]

By buying a queen and introducing her you can have 2 honey producing hives cause you are gaining 30 days of brood production. Don't be to eager to get the splits done to early, talking to much away from the parent hive or not providing the split with enough resources can cause a major set back to the build up of the hives. split a week hive and you will end up with 2 week hives in 60 days, split a strong hive and in 60 days you will have 2 strong hives. Keeping this in mind you may be better off pulling a couple of frames from each colony to make one extra hive. You want to do the split 45-60 days before your main honey flow so the split has time to expand and have a good population of bees of foraging age.