fall splits for expansion

[rainesridgefarm]

All the information from every book I have says you make your splits in the spring when there is a slight flow on or you are feeding one to one syrup.

Why can you not do Late summer expansions with new queens? I am thinking you could move the parent hive 100 yards and leave three frames of brood and bees and let the field force make up the rest with a new queen in the old location. Feed both colonies to make it through the winter. This would need to be done no later then the first week in August for the northern group. The honey flow is over and they do not have a lot to do? Give me some dialog and has anyone tried this?

Phillip

[bjerm2]

I do but I piggy back them. I make a nuc on top of the parent hive. The inner cover hole I have covered over with window screening (both sides so the queens can't fight) and the heat from the main hive keeps the nuc warm all winter. It does take a lot of feeding for the nucs. Main problem is you need a cycle or two for brood so that you have enough workers going into winter. I live in upstate New York, temp -30F and 7 feet of snow. My nucs make it out ok but I make them up late July.
Dan

[odfrank]

I do it, but I am in an area with winter flowers and a mild climate. Even then, the splits are slow to build up, but do fine in spring. You might be best moving your splits to another site so that you don't lose the field force to the old hive.

[dtwilliamson]

I made up 2 nucs on 7/15. One with queen cells and 3 frames of brood and bees the other nuc I made up with 3 frames of brood and bees and provided them with a NWC queen.

My queen from the queen cells (she emerged 7/16) started laying yesterday. The other nuc has a head start because the queen started laying earlier.

I don't know how they'll fair but I'm gonna see how they do. With 2 queens laying I figure the worst case is I can combine the two in the fall and feed them well and/or give them a full super of honey. Hopefully, between the two they will have a decent population of bees between now and then. If not I'll just combine with the main hives.

This is my first year back into bees after a long hiatus and I already feel like having at least one experimental hive every year to use as a guinea pig to try different things out. (Not as a guinea pig in a bad way)

Not sure this really qualifies as a fall split but it does seem late to me!


Dan

[This message has been edited by dtwilliamson (edited July 26, 2004).]

[Hillbillynursery]

Well this is omething I would like to here more about. I will be taking some bee from strongest colonies and equalizing as the weather has not been nice to me and a couple of my nucs swarmed. But if I have more frames than needed to make all my hive 2 mediums deep I have though about another split. First hard frost is normally end of Oct. sometime(like last year) not until mid Nov.. I have a couple supers of honey for winter feed so it is a matter of getting the queen getting going good enough to get them thru winter. Another side note is queens started laying in Jan. last year as I had a 75f day and took a peek(3 days later though it was a high of 30f). Winters here can be very lite to moderate. one medium of stores is plenty for around here. But this is something I think could help alot of people increase their numbers if they wish and it was feasable.

[swarm_trapper]

we are trying it this year we made a split a week and a half ago so we will se what happens we did pigggyback it on anouther hive the reason i hope that this works is so we can split and still raise our own queens mid april is alittle early for queens here(not man drones) Nick

[dtwilliamson]

An update.... I started the year off with 2 nucs on May 8th. They grew so fast that I split 2 nucs off of them (as described above in an earlier post). I just combined the nucs I had made and have a pretty strong hive almost a full 2 deeps worth of bees. The upside is that I now have 3 fairly strong hives in terms of bees. The downside is that after I distribute the honey I currently have from these hives they will be short of supplies for the winter. Hopefully we get a really strong fall flow. Activity seemed to be picking up yesterday. I may have to feed one or two of them before winter.

I did my splits mid-July. I would think that starting them this time of year would bee difficult. Not sure there would be enough time to build up unless you can really supply them with drawn comb and alot of bees and honey.

Good luck. Let us know how it works.

Dan