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spring split

1K views 5 replies 2 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
For weight reasons I am eliminating my deep boxes. I thought the perfect time to do this would be now cuz I thought they'd be empty, well I was wrong.

So far the one hive I checked has some honey and pollen left over from last year, and all stages of brood from this year, not packed with brood, but maybe the 1/2 of both sides of three or four frames in the deeps. And there are still a ton of bees, too, I thought after winter I'd only have a few but it looks like the hive has doubled its size over winter !!!

What I did was took the whole deep off the hive and moved it to the other side of the yard with all the bees in it, except the queen, I kept her in the origional hive. I figure some of the bees will fly back to the other hive with the queen, but some will stay to raise the brood, right?

Anyway I guess my question is will the split now raise its own queen, or do I have to buy a queen for it, and to tell you the truth I dont even want it cuz it is a deep, can I sell it as a nuc or something or does a nuc have to have a queen?
 
#4 ·
A couple of weeks. But they probably WON'T be without a queen. They will probably raise one. The question is will there be enough drones for her to mate. I just inspected my hives again today and saw two drones in the hives. I haven't seen any flying yet.

Also keep in mind, if you buy a queen, in about 13 to 14 days there will be a virgin in the hive and they will probably reject any queen you give them with her in there. If you get one sooner, they will probbably still reject the new one because there is a queen cell. So make sure there is no queen cell and no virgin queen in the hive when you introduce the new queen.
 
#5 ·
ok, I am gonna order a new queen, she should be here in about a week, Ill make sure I get out all the queen cells before I put her in.

Im going to end up with alot more hives then I thought I'd ever have, I only wanted three or so but if my hives grow this year like they did last year Im going to end up with six or more hives, is there any way to slow them down?
 
#6 ·
>is there any way to slow them down?

Not a problem I've ever worried about.


But yes, you can slow them down a lot in a lot of ways. Some will interfere with the production and some will enhance it.

For instance, if, instead of a cut down split, you just remove the queen (either to a small nuc or kill her) from the hive three weeks before the flow you'll get:

1) more honey because of more foragers and less brood to feed and care for.

2) more bees for the harvest but less bees afterwards to feed.

3) less mites because of the break in the brood cycle

4) a new young queen

You can do this again one more time during the year and skip TWO brood cycles if you want to cut them back more. If you remove the queen they will, of course, raise a new one but that takes 28 days before you start to see eggs again.

Just be sure they have a queen and resources to raise some young bees in the fall to overwinter.

If you remove the queen to a small nuc, you can kill the queen and combine the nuc once you're sure you have a viable young queen in the original hive.

Another method is to do a combine two weeks before the honey flow. If you combine two hives to one for all your hives you've halved the number of hives and probably tripled the harvest.
 
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