Whats the best plan to follow?

[scottr]

I started two sets of package bees this year (All-Star Queens). I had to re-queen one hive about 3 weeks after I put the packages in place (not sure what happened to the queen). I transferred one frame of brood from my strong hive to the weak hive. I am feeding sugar water to both hives and they are going through about 1 quart per day each. I also added a patty of Dadant "brood builder" to each last weekend (laid across the top of the frames in the second super).

Where I am now:
#1 hive is very strong and I recently added the 2nd deep super for brood/stores. It has not made much progress pulling out comb in the new super in the last 7 days (actually, barely touched it). The lower super is almost completely full of either honey or brood. They are going to have to focus on the upper super very soon.
#2 hive (requeened hive) seems to be coming along well. Nice brood and stores, just not as strong. I went ahead and added the 2nd super, but they have not done anything with it thus far.

My question is/are should I concentrate on getting some good splits and forget about this years honey crop or should try to get a honey crop and get some splits late in the year. I am located in SE Texas (Brenham area) and the wildflowers are almost done. Not sure what the next flow will be until the fall.

What is the best way to do the splits?

Any thoughts or suggestions? It would be nice to have at least 4 hives ready for full production next spring.

Thanks

Scott

[Michael Bush]

>What is the best way to do the splits?

There are a lot of different approaches with slightly different outcomes. Some depends on what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it.

Do you want to raise your own queen? Buy Queens? Do you want to maximize production when raising a new queen? Do you just want to do an even split and try to maximize the number of bees?

>Any thoughts or suggestions? It would be nice to have at least 4 hives ready for full production next spring.

I would probably do the splits if they are doing that well, but don't be surprised if they do well or they don't do well. If not you can combine later. The weather and the timing of the weather and the quality of the queen etc. can vary greatly.

The concepts of splits are:

You have to make sure that both of the resulting colonies have a queen or the resources to make one (eggs or larvae that just hatched from the egg, drones flying, pollen and honey, plenty of nurse bees).

You have to make sure that both of the resulting colonies get an adequate supply of honey and pollen to feed the brood and themselve.

You have to make sure that you account for drift back to the original site and insure that both resutling colonies have enough population of bees to care for the brood and the hive they have.

The old adage is that you can try to raise more bees or more honey. If you want both, then you can try to maximize honey in the old location and bees in the new split. Otherwise most splits are either a small nuc made up from just enough to get it started, or an even split.

An even split. You take half of everything and divide it up. Face both of new hives at the sides of the old hive so the returning bees aren't sure which one to come back to. In a week or so, swap places to equalize the drift to the one with the queen.

A walk away split. You take a frame of eggs, two frames of emerging brood and two frames of pollen and honey and put them in a 5 frame nuc, shake in some extra nurse bees (making sure you don’t get the queen), put the lid on and walk away. Come back in four weeks and see if the queen is laying.

A typical split. Same as above, but you either introduce a queen you bought or you come back in four days and destroy any queen cells that are capped. These were started from larvae that are too old. Now walk away and let them raise their new queen. If you introduce a queen they will be four weeks ahead of the hive that is raising their own, so you will have to put them in a larger box than a nuc to start with.

A cut down split. This is very timing critical. It should be done shortly before the main honey flow. The purpose is to maximize the foraging population while minimizing swarming. There are variations on this, but basically the idea is to put almost all the open brood, honey and pollen and the queen in a new hive while leaving all the capped brood, some of the honey and a frame of eggs with the old hive. The new hive won't swarm because it doesn't have a workforce (which all returns to the old hive). The old hive won't swarm because it doesn't have a queen or any open brood. It will take at least six weeks for them to raise a queen and get a decent brood nest going. Meantime, you still get a lot of production (possibly a lot MORE production) from the old hive because they are not busy caring for brood. You get the old hive requeened and you get a split. Another variation is to leave the queen with the old hive and take ALL the open brood out. They won't swarm right away because the open brood is gone.

Here I like to use five frame nucs for splits. I like to minimize the size of the space they have to heat and take care of.

It may be that that is or is not an advantage where you live, but we still have a lot of cold nights and cool days on occasion and the splits seem to take off better in a smaller space.

[cochran500]

In a cut down split will the bees stop working the supers and move to the 5 new frames you put around the brood nest?

[Michael Bush]

I don't know exactly what you have to work with, but probably about half of the brood nest is capped and about half is open brood. You're leaving the capped and moving the open brood (except one frame to raise a queen from). Depending on what you have, you can fill in the rest of a brood box with some honey, pollen etc. Basically you want to end up with one full brood box (with capped brood that doesn't need to be fed) and some supers at the old location and one full brood box (of open brood and the queen) at the new location with any left over frames of honey. The foragers will all return to the old location and you have one hive with lots of bees and emerging brood and no brood to feed.