What Does the Novice Beekeeper Need to Know?

Number 4a

"Making a Split"

"And Why"

Mid-April is a good time to start thinking about making splits. I choose mid-April based on what flowers are blooming to ensure both colonies are receiving adequate food. I like to see henbit weed, red maple and possibly wild cherry trees blooming simultaneously. To make a successful split of a wintered over colony, you need a robust colony that has built up a goodly population. You would like the bees to be actively working on 8 frames which all have drawn out comb. There should be brood (eggs to capped cells) on at least 4 frames (5-6 is better).

When you make your split the colony that retains the queen (strong colony) will continue to develop faster than the colony you make and place a new queen in (weak colony).

The strong colony will continue laying eggs at what ever rate the old queen was working at before the split. There will be a lag in egg laying in the weak colony for several reasons.

The first reason is most of the bees moved to the weak colony are in-hive workers. They are nurse bees, wax builders, and storage bees. Most of the foragers were out working when the split was done and came home to the old colony location (usually where the strong hive is sitting).

The second reason is that you have decided to purchase a queen and place her in the weak colony. Make sure you schedule delivery of that purchased queen for the day or one day after the split. This purchased queen will be young and not lay eggs at the same high rate as the "winter over" queen. There will also be the 3-5 day lag time while the new "caged" queen is released by the worker bees in the hive. This "release" time should be observed to ensure the weak colony accepts the queen.

The third reason is that the weak colony does not have as many foragers as the old strong colony. The queen only lays eggs as fast as the nurse bees can tend to them. Also, the queen monitors the incoming food supply to make sure there is enough for the hatching and growing larvae. Low incoming food causes the queen to slow down egg laying which results in slow colony expansion.

When you make the split, you want to move at least one frame that has all stages of brood (eggs, larvae, and capped brood (pupae). Since the larvae need fed and the newly hatched bees need fed within 2 hr. of hatching, you will need to move at least one frame of pollen and honey stored food. You will want to add at least two frames to make a 4-frame split. I recommend the other two frames be at least drawn comb. If you can move 2 frames of honey you will greatly reduce the work load on the weaker hive. You can take these 2 frames from a different (or one each from two different) hives. You can either move the bees from the different hives on the frames of honey or brush the bees off and move beeless frames. Since the bees on the honey frames are young in-hive worker bees they are not very aggressive and will be accepted into the new weak hive quite readily. I smoke the honey frame bees and the accepting weak hive quite a bit to kill queen pheromone scent. This might help acceptance of strange bees.

If you decide to grow your own queen for the weak hive there are several ways to do this. HOWEVER, there is one constant that you must observe. There has to be adequate drone population hatching out so the new virgin queen can get adequately mated.

You can make sure you move eggs with the brood frame you place in the weak colony and the bees will grow their own queen (hopefully).

You can move the old queen from the strong hive with her own bees that you moved in the split. She will slow down egg laying a little but not as much as a virgin queen.

You can move a frame that has supersession queen cells on it from a hive that was so strong it was getting ready to swarm. This technique provides faster results than growing a queen from eggs.

If you add two frames of foundation to the new weak hive you have increased the work load to a phenomenal level on the smaller colony population. Add at least drawn comb. You can move drawn comb from any hive. You can also borrow some from you best beekeeper buddy. Put the replacement foundation frames in the old strong colony. I like to feed 1:1 syrup to the weak colony because of the lack of foragers. This helps keep the weak hive busy and happy.

Once the weak hive is settled in, the queen is accepted and laying eggs you might want to consider boosting the population. This is at least a weak past the split.

Technique one is to switch the location of the weak hive and any stronger established hive. Do this in the middle of the day when the foragers are out working. The foragers from the strong hive will return home (which is now the weak hive) and the foragers from weak hive will return to the strong hive. There will be a net gain to the weak hive without a total loss to the strong hive. The foragers will be accepted without any fighting because a bee coming in with "gifts" is accepted where as a robber bee comes empty and acts differently.

The second technique is to place an empty honey super with drawn out comb or foundation on a strong hive. Put some honey or spray some syrup on the comb. The bees in the strong hive will go up into the honey super quite quickly. In 1-2 hours remove the honey super with the bees. Smoke it well and then place it on the weak hive. These are in-hive works so they are not too aggressive.

Thirdly, you can remove frames of brood with their nurse bees from a strong hive, smoke them lightly, smoke the open weak hive, and place the frames into the weak hive. Again, these are nurse bees and not very aggressive. Each added frame will increase the population by about 2,000 bees when all the brood hatches out.

You can add bees to the split all the way until nectar flow. This will enhance the honey collection of the weak hive which is not weak any more. I don't mess with hives during nectar flow.

The colonies that collect the most honey will have between 30,000-60,000 bees. You can tell when a colony is reaching this level by how many bees DO NOT go into the hive in the evening. The bees can be congregating on the front of the hive above the entrance slot all the way up the box. Or, they can be bearding off the front entrance landing board.

During this period, you want to make sure there is plenty of room inside the hive. Maybe there are still four frames that still need to be worked on. Leave the hive crowded to expedite that work. If all the frames are being worked you need to make a management decision.

Do you want to grow into a double hive body colony or collect honey to rob off for yourself. I go with the honey route. So, place a honey super with foundation or drawn comb on top for the bees to work into. After the main nectar flow is over you can add the second hive body for the bees to fill out with their winter honey stores.

When you have lots of bees, always check for swarm queen cells so you can counter the swarming instinct. Hives full of food, full of brood, and full of bees will swarm. They will also swarm before that.