Splitting hives
Today's project was splitting a hive to introduce 2 queens.
The hive had 3 boxes.
Set up 2 bottom boards. I like 4 hives on a pallet. 5 palettes arranged in a circle of six. The space created by sixth allows you to back into the center of the circle. This makes each hive easier to work on. Reducing drift and making winterizing easier.
Split off the top two boxes. Put one on each bottom board. In this case the bottom box was a deep. Middle what we call a crossways. The top a dadant.
The dadant we use because we sell nucs. It helps reduce the temptation to make the hive to small on nuc out. The crossways is a part of our queen rearing system. The frame is the width of the box and dadant depth. More of this in the queen rearing system.
Now go through each box recording the number of frames of bees, brood, combined, foundation, empty and honey. Look carefully for the queen. This technique requires the queen to be found.
On going through the deep a supersedure was found.
Good shot of a supersedure queen cell. You will see these sometimes in a hive that has a failing queen.
Yet I have seen them in this and in the swarm position in the same hive.
Regardless as to the condition of the queen and the colony. Or the colony.
It comes from a selected larvae by the workers. They float it up in place. Swarm position which are layed by the queen or moved there by workers.
As there will be many on a given frame and hive they lend themselves well to be moved to a queen less colony to emerge and mate.
This changed the plan. The cell would mean we will have a new queen from the over wintered queen. She is a good one. A new bottom board was placed and another deep added. A nuc was created in this box 3 frames of brood was added capped brood and lay space. This was done to accommodate introducing a queen. The cell was left in the old spot with younger brood and eggs. This was done to accommodate returning foragers and keeping enough bees for the time lag for the queen to emerge, mature, mate and start laying. This was left as a single. This was extra and my weaken that two colonies and require boosting later. For a small or growing operation this continues local genetics and introduces new blood to the operation.
The other deep was filled with a feeder comb, foundation and queen introduced. A dadant was added with a frame of honey added.
The crossways was most likely drawn comb and the queen and some brood. A week or so ago was added between the two boxes. So progress was great. A deep was added for space.
The dadant was full of bees brood and resources. A frame of honey was removed and replaced with comb. A deep was added and a queen introduced.
Queen introduction with a jzbz cage is done by taping the candy to prevent the bees from releasing the queen to soon. The cage is placed at least one inch below the frame top. Between two frames of brood. 90 degrees to the comb. This gives the bees better access to the queens pharmones and feeding.
In a day or two remove the tape .
