I'm trying to understand splits and could use some help and clarification...

[CpnObvious]

I've read every thread I can find about splits...  Based on the land of confusion I'm in, it's obvious that bees are (basically) all women.

It's not quite warm enough yet to really go into the hives to determine their status... but I believe they both seem to be doing well.  My ultimate goal would be to split both hives before swarm season.  I was thinking about just doing walkaway splits.  The (new) hive with the old queen would be moved to the other apiary.  I've also watch some videos in which the keep would slightly crush the bottom 1/3 of a few cells with new eggs in them at about a 30-degree angle, which he claims the bees would then turn those into queen cells.  Obvious letting them raise their own queen, versus buying one, sets them back by nearly a month.  I would really like to get honey out of the two donor hives... is this unrealistic?  This weekend appears to be the beginning of warmer weather heading in, but I'm not going to get too hopeful yet.

[Perry]

First off, I love Genesis!

If you could get a couple of queens, I would just buy and add to the queenless halves of your splits if you are really wanting honey. They will still do so even if you do a walk-away split though, just not as much.
If you are going to do a walk-away split, why not leave one half with a queen in each yard? Just playing it safe as it were.
I never bother with knicking the bottom of cells or anything, as long as I see eggs I let the bees do the rest on their own.

[Papakeith]

Obvious letting them raise their own queen, versus buying one, sets them back by nearly a month.

You'll lose more than a month by my bee math.
I'll assume that you have day old larvae if you see eggs, so for the sake of argument we'll shave a couple of days there.

Queen emerges - 16 days
Queen matures mates and starts laying - 7-14 days
Queen's eggs emerge - 21 days
So you are really looking at 6 weeks on the short side before you see any new brood emerging.  Even then, she doesn't hit the ground pounding out 1,500 eggs a day.
Granted, if you have plenty of eggs you will still have 21 days of emerging brood from the old queen (minus the frames you stole for the split)
So, best case scenario you will have 3 weeks with no new bees coming into the hive.  So, maybe your month lost isn't that far off after all.

If your plan is to get honey from that hive I would have a queen ready.
Having a mated queen  will take you from 44 days down to 26 days saving.  Assuming the same 21 days of emerging brood from the old queen you only have a 5 day period where no new brood is emerging in the hive instead of three weeks.

[riverbee]

good post by keith, i will add, don't expect honey capn with a walkaway.....

more approximate numbers to mull over:

a queen's timeline:
day 1, 2, 3, Egg
cell is capped on the 8th day
day 16 Queen birth
day 20 Mating flight
day 23-30 Start Egg Laying

stages of growth of honey bees days after eggs are laid:
egg hatching>worker 3, queen 3, drone 3
larva>worker 5, queen 5, drone 7
cell capped> worker 8, queen 8, drone 10
pupa>worker 13, queen 8, drone 14
adult emergence>worker 21, queen 16, drone 24

queen raised from brood~ about 49 days , so maybe 6 to 7 week delay when you want a colony to raise their own queen. one aspect of this is good mite control, the cons sometimes outweigh walkaways. weather, enough drones, queen turns out to be a dud, and most of all, this is very costly in terms of buildup. bees will dying off and there will be no replacements, so population diminishes greatly. foraging goes down for pollen and nectar, so they will have to be fed.

the queen is raised from young larvae (hopefully), add about 13 days for emergence, add another 15 or 16 days for her to mature......mating, egg laying. then wait for the first bees (workers ~ 21 days) to emerge. your looking at approximately 49 -50 days.

ps in short, i would purchase mated queens, it is nice though to experiment with the walkaways/queen cells/swarm cells for a learning experience.

[LazyBkpr]

I am not really a fan of walk away splits. I have done them before, I will likely do them again, but its a lot better to do a lighter split if you want honey.
      If your goal is honey, wait until the flow is about to start, and pull your queen into a nuc with three or four frames of bees/brood/honey and pollen..   A walk away split is usually comprised of half the bees, and thats less chance of honey being made for you. a nuc split means you take away queen, bees and brood. It is in effect an artificial swarm.
   When you pull the queen into a nuc, the eggs and larvae she left behind will soon get capped. Your hive no longer has open brood to feed or care for, you free up lots of bees for foraging. Meanwhile, they are also making their new queen. This hive will be "less" likely to swarm again this year. They will pack away extra honey while the new queen prepares to start laying, and your nuc with the old queen will build up pretty quickly..

  Mrs. River posted while I was typing.. I forgot the benefits of a brood break and Varroa control.

[riverbee]

what scott said.........
i am not a fan of walkaway's either, too many variables that can typically go wrong and the time involved to wind up with a queen that is not mated well, or no queen.

even though there is the benefit of varroa control from the brood break, in my HO, this really doesn't merit chancing the failure of the walkaway for some of the reasons i mentioned.  the biggest is queen failure and bees are dying off, the population diminishes because no new bees are being born in that time period, reduced foraging, etc.... and if the walkaway fails, what to do with these older bees?  you can combine them if you wish but this can be a challenge as well sometimes.

[pistolpete]

A true walk away split means taking one of the two brood boxes and popping it on a new bottom board.  IMO this is the worst kind of split one can do.  For starters, you don't know what ended up where.  The top box could be 90% honey and 10% brood, leaving one split with not enough food and the other with not enough bees.   A much more intelligent way to go about it is to actually go through the hive and divide up the resources into two equal colonies.

How much honey you get out of your splits depends entirely on when your major flows are.  In my region the big flows are in July and August, so a May split has plenty of time to build up for those flows.   Last year I split my hives heavily, and had them raise new queens and they still brought in about 100 lbs. each.

Here is a strategy that might work well for you:  Take your strongest hive and pull a fairly small Nuc with the old queen.  Notch some cells on 3 different frames of eggs/1day old larvae.  You should end up with queen cells on 3 frames.  2 weeks later pull a nuc and the old queen from the other hive and insert a frame with a ripe queen cell.   If your hives are strong enough you can also pull a third Nuc and add the extra frame with queen cells.

When it's all said and done you'll have: 2 or 3 Nucs that will build to full colonies by July  and 2 strong hives that will have new queens and will bring in a reasonable honey surplus.

I like the OTS notching very much.  It means I end up with queen cells where I want them, not in random corners of the hive.

[Yankee11]

Also remember. the hatched bees don't become foragers for about 19 days after they have hatched.

I usually think of it as 40 days from egg to forager.

[pistolpete]

One important thing I learned last year: you need a strong hive to split (or make Nucs from).   When you pull a Nuc from a strong hive, you can't tell the difference a week later.  When you pull a Nuc from a mediocre hive, they're still recovering a month later. 

[Papakeith]

   When you pull the queen into a nuc, the eggs and larvae she left behind will soon get capped. Your hive no longer has open brood to feed or care for, you free up lots of bees for foraging. Meanwhile, they are also making their new queen. This hive will be "less" likely to swarm again this year. They will pack away extra honey while the new queen prepares to start laying, and your nuc with the old queen will build up pretty quickly..

ahh, I had forgotten to consider splitting right before a flow gives the hive more of a foraging workforce.  Thanks for the reminder. 

So many angles to look at this from.

[Ray]

Thank you Papakeith!

"So many angles to look at this from."
 And the answer is: Beekeeping 

My vote is for splitting off nucs, with installed queens.

[pistolpete]

This "extra" work force during a brood break does not seem to work out for me.  It seems that the bees get a bit demoralised with no brood to feed and don't work as hard.  My theory is that since a bee is like a battery with a finite amount of "work" in it, the bees conserve their energy during a brood break so that they live longer and make up for the gap in population.

[sc-bee]

The notching system you are speaking of is "On the Spot Queen Rearing. I have posted a video and Mel covers notching with the intention of not totally diminishing your honey crop. Long video can't remember the time frame of the info you are seeking but it is there. You notch one frame and then remove a split, this is of course after removing the queen to a keeping nuc.

[Papakeith]

Also remember. the hatched bees don't become foragers for about 19 days after they have hatched.

I usually think of it as 40 days from egg to forager.

Is this always the case? Or, will the colony decide to do "early promotions" to create the workforce they need to survive.  I find it hard(but not impossible) to believe that if  all of the foragers suddenly departed that a good number of the nurse bees would head on out to the bigger world.

[Jen]

Pete, I can't see the nurse bees leaving if there is a queen and eggs, larvae and brood.

I have read that when a bee is hatched it will spend 3 weeks indoors, then they will be kicked out to forage for the last 3 weeks of their life.

[iddee]

Jen, don't ever put exact times on bee actions. Foragers can even draw wax if they need to. Younger bees will forage if needed.

[Jen]

Good to know..Thanks!

[LazyBkpr]

Yep, they do what they need to do..   Older foragers can rejuvenate a little to return to being nurse bees, and young nurse bees can and do step up to be foragers..   A good example is a trap out..  When no foragers are coming back in, nurse bees will put on the mantle of forager.. of course, then they are also "trapped out".

[Les]

Cpn Obvious....I am probably the only one that watched the entire video.  Man o' Man was that a throw back to another time.  Phil Collins thought it was bad then......imagine what he is thinking now and where did Phil Collins disappear to?

[Slowmodem]

Cpn Obvious....I am probably the only one that watched the entire video.  Man o' Man was that a throw back to another time.  Phil Collins thought it was bad then......imagine what he is thinking now and where did Phil Collins disappear to?

I always liked Phil Collins.  He struck me as Joe Everyman.  Sadly he has had some health problems.  This is from Wikipedia:

Collins had reportedly lost hearing in his left ear in 2000 due to a viral infection. In September 2009, it was reported that Collins could no longer play the drums, due to a recent operation to repair dislocated vertebrae in his neck. A statement from Collins on the Genesis band website said, "There isn't any drama regarding my 'disability' and playing drums. Somehow during the last Genesis tour I dislocated some vertebrae in my upper neck and that affected my hands. After a successful operation on my neck, my hands still can't function normally. Maybe in a year or so it will change, but for now it is impossible for me to play drums or piano. I am not in any 'distressed' state; stuff happens in life." However, in 2010 Collins alluded to feelings of depression and low self-esteem in recent years, claiming in an interview that he had contemplated committing suicide, but he resisted for the sake of his children.

In October 2014, Collins told John Wilson on BBC Radio 4's Front Row that he still could not play the drums; he said the problem was not arthritis but an undiagnosed nerve problem where he was unable to "grip the sticks".