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Splitting the hive up completely into new nucleus colonies

8K views 43 replies 18 participants last post by  little_john 
#1 ·
The plan is to split up 20 hives completely to form approximately 100 nucleus colonies. What is the best way to find the Queen's? Going through them the day before and either cage or kill the Queen seems like one possibility but is there some more efficient method? These are all single deeps.
 
#5 ·
Not if you box clever ...

So - you're going to split each box into 5 (on average) ? Ok - take one box, move it away from the others (if necessary) and just do a 1-into-5 split. Spread those nuc boxes around a few feet apart ... and watch.

Four of those nucleus colonies should start showing signs of distress (although it won't be as clear as with a 50/50 split) - the fifth will have the queen in it. Then repeat with the other 19.

But - if you're producing your own queen cells, don't bother with the above - just accept a few losses and save yourself some time. Q/C's are cheap enough to mass produce - I often put two in the same nuc, just to make sure.
LJ
 
#4 ·
Take a spare brood box 20 queen excluders and 20 ramps long enough to reach the hive entrance from the ground. Remove brood box from bottom board, place queen excluder on bottom board, place spare box on q.e., place ramp in front of hive, shake all bees from original brood box on the ramp placing bee free frames in the new box. Repeat for the next hive using the original box as the spare. When all the bees are back in the hive the queen will be under the excluder.
 
#6 ·
First, I wouldn't completely sacrifice all the colonies at once. I would remove frames of bees and brood...over time, and last brood harvest the queens are removed and what's left becomes the last nuc. This allows the old queens to produce you additional frames of brood. We do this every year, making 350+. Each nuc gets two frames of brood and bees, and a frame of honey and one empty comb. We begin splitting about June 15, and finish about July 15. All nucs get a mated queen. We don't ask the nucs to raise their own queens. Doing so just limits what can be done. Also, when brood and bees are removed, the frames are replaced with comb not foundation. Foundation slows down brood production. Finding the queen? No need...Just be sure the queen isn't on the frames of brood you harvest.
 
#10 ·
Thanks Micheal Palmer, I really like the plan to let the old queens keep producing brood and bees, that fits well with my later summer splitting plans. With this plan in mind and since I have no confidence in finding queens (yet) could I, the day before, give the hive(s) to be split a new box with 8 empty combs and 2 combs from her nest or could I just give her 10 empty combs if I am feeding syrup and protein (because she would have no stores), shake all the bees down into the new box of combs then put the excluder on top and the box of combs (from her brood nest) over the excluder. This way I could confidently make the splits the next day.
 
#8 ·
Thanks little_john another interesting and novel approach...and I would know which ones were the old queens because when I check for mated queens 2 weeks later the colonies with the old queens would have plenty of capped brood.
 
#9 ·
Another suggestion - if you're open to the idea of changing procedures - is to devote some of those colonies to the formation of 'brood-factories'. There's a description of how these work in MP's Sustainable Apiary video - links can be found at:https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?352071-Michael-Palmer-video-reference-list

I'm finding the 'brood factory' concept one of the best ideas I've ever come across (thanks, Michael), and have been using a couple successfully for both generating brood and the drawing-out of foundationless worker comb. As these twin stacks have nurse bees both in abundance AND in continuous feeding mode, this coming year I'm also going to try raising a few queen-cells within each brood-factory to hopefully take advantage of those conditions. Should prove interesting. :)
LJ
 
#11 ·
definitely open to this idea as I am still laying the groundwork for my apiary and will definitely have brood factories...have seen all of Micheal's videos...love it all. In essence, what you suggested works very well with what has been suggested here, that is to use the original queens in the 20 boxes to continue making brood and bees for the rest of the summer...wow, such great suggestions!
 
#12 ·
All great ideas for.splitting, but I question whether 20 single deep hives will have suffiecent resources to create 100 nucs. That would have to assume that every single frame was suitable for nuc making, something I do not see in my own apiary. Go with the brood factory idea and create 20 nucs per week or so using purchased queens. Or do a flyback split and harvest queen cells to create the nucs, just dont do them all at once. Huge amount of unecessary risk.
 
#15 ·
Hi JWPalmer,
I've always been a risk taker, not braging by any means because sometimes you win big but sometimes you lose big. It seems it is the only way I go. However I have a sensible brother and a sensible cousin who would tend to dispense similar advice and I always appreciate that and i always try and take it a little bit to heart as well. Thank you!
 
#18 ·
Last summer I took a simaler plunge. I split 9 hives into 60. Before splitting I fed and built them up to double deeps full of brood. I did it in stages over about a month leaving the established queens as brood factories or splitting a hive into for or five nucs leaving the parent queen with no brood but to receive all of the feild bees as I did everything in one bee yard. It was July which is after our flow is over so I open fed about 1000ft away to keep the little Nucs from being robbed. I built them all up to either single ten frame deeps our double five frame for winter and have only lost one of the Nucs so far.
 
#23 ·
K, the article is about a basic system Free flying QLS and a Free flying QRF, just scaled down more or less this http://doorgarden.com/2011/11/07/simple-honey-bee-queen-rearing-for-beginners/ used as a starter and then moved to a 5X5X5 to be finished
lets talk about were your are in your beekeeping and what you have for resources. Let me preface that I am NOT trying to be mean, or put you down, I am trying to get a better understanding of your situation
rewinding a a bit
You stated with 3 nucs 2018
Only been keeping bees since May 10th 2018. Purchased 3 nucs and by July had turned them into 18 hives when I found queen cells and I caught the swarms. View attachment 46129
15 mouths later you had grown to 100
25 of my 100 colonies
Now your talking about spliting 20 and are a long way from "being out of the woods" from old man winter. Is 20 all you have? or do you have some other resources to work with
If 20 is all you have, what happen to the other 75 that lived threw the MAQS kill?
Are these true singles, or nucs overwintering in a 10F box

What is your currant cell building method?

I am just concerned that your plans are going to out run your resources and skills
 
#24 ·
Well msl... it does feel a bit like you led me to the town square and then pulled down my pants. Your response does make me feel a bit icky, even my friends and family don't seem as concerned about my fortune as you do. So I will just say I have extensive hours invested studying with the very best...Kirk, Micheal, Ian and Kamon all of which dispense no nonsense solid advice, however I know some mistakes will be made...of course. I have 68 beautiful hives right now mostly in single deeps. Put fondant on the hives on Saturday they ranged between 5 and 10 frames of bees.
 
#29 ·
I have 68 beautiful hives right now mostly in single deeps. Put fondant on the hives on Saturday they ranged between 5 and 10 frames of bees.
I'm curious as to what your intentions are once you get the number of hives you desire. Why are you doing this?

It seems that you are doing very well; however, it's not my way. I have always made my bees earn the money to pay for any increase in bees and equipment. Who knows? Maybe you won't like producing honey or won't be able to produce that much. You never know until you've done it.

Maybe it's not worth it...too much work for too little profit? That was my experience at one point in time, fwiw.

I don't know, but IMO these are questions you should be considering before going willy nilly to max out your hive numbers.
 
#25 ·
Calkal, I do not think it was msl's intent to demean at all. We beekeepers as a group tend to look out after one another so his words of caution seemed, to me, to be justified. By your original post, I too thought you only had 20 single deep hives and were about to put your entire apiary at risk by aggressive splitting. Obviously this is not the case with you. But there are plenty of threads here on Beesource where growth plans of the beekeeper far exceeded the bees' resources and the results were somewhat less than stellar. Carry on!
 
#34 ·
70's song; "You've gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure"

Nothing crueler than letting someone kill their hives by not speaking up.

If you feel a little awkward after delivery you probably did it all right.

If you felt a little happy delivering it, seek professional help.
 
#28 ·
Hey msl no hard feelings. Joe Latshaw's article leaves out quite a bit of important information. Not being critical at all just factual. It is always hard to get all the information out of just one piece of literature or YouTube video, it needs to be criss-crossed and re examined many times from many perspectives. That was why I asked for additional information on his system. I'd rather lose all my teeth and my left one than give up YouTube even short term. I have watched all of the National Honey Show lectures and some of them twice and some of them 3 times. Not to mention lectures from Clarence Collison and Lawrence Connor. Books are good too and I read those. I just received Contemporary Queen Rearing by Laidlaw about a month ago. I like productive talk better than this kind of talk.
 
#30 ·
Hello,

I thing you should pick out the queens. Because the worker bees will gather in this nucleus were a queen and open brood is in. The other splits with just capped brood or even no brood and just a cell are not attractive for the worker bees and they will gather in the neighbours when the came back. But this depends on wheater, how old the combs are and how much space is between the hives.

The other question is how much hives you run at all? If you just had this 20 and you split them completly, you harvest no honey. But You have to pay sugar, equipment and other costs. Do you use Plastic- or wax foundation? I prefer wax foundation produced from own cappings. So I am save not to get chinese fake wax. But you dont have own wax If you dont harvest honey this season. The second problem is, that you will get a lot of honey next season, which ist need to be sold. I would choose to split 10 hives this year and the other next season. So you could rise up your honey production slowly. search for costumers and so on.

If you run more than this 20 hives, lets say 100... I would took out a broodcomb with bees ( without queen of course) from each and build splits from this. You reduce swarming in the colonies with this and dont have to kill queens or reduce your number of production hives. And if you replace the missing comb with newer material you "renovate" your hives with this.

best regarts,

Malte Niemeyer

Sorry for my bad english...
 
#36 ·
Good luck please report back how it went. Maybe my area or my lack of skills but giving a thin nuc nothing but a queen cell is not a good start. Even if she hatches in 2-3 days then after 4 days maturing and say a week to get mated and hopefully your loaded with drones that’s close to two weeks with good flying conditions. Two weeks 2000 eggs a day you’ve lost 28000 bees potentially per colony at a time when they need to be growing.

Go big or go home I guess but I would buy some mated queens of a good pedigree and if need be sell a few nucs to help the cost your colony survival rate will be much higher it will pay for itself.
 
#37 ·
Hi amk, I would tend to disagree, the perceived loss 2000 eggs a day is not compared to a vacuum. the Queen would need to be purchased. Released and then start laying. to get to 2000 per day would easily take a week, or more, so 14000 bees in your example are just not there. Unless you move a fully laying Queen there is a start up time.. So really you have the queen cost and the time cost. Some purchase queens some make their own. And BTW the original queen pre split is still laying, so hypothetically Apiary wide there is minimal loss of "eggs" and in 2 week many more queens laying. IMO for me I would rather practice and learn to make my own queens. I have not had good luck buying and my eggs are in someone else basket.

A thin NUC with a Q cell is a mating NUC, if started early enough it can be increase for the year. If one prefers to buy and thinks the 14k to 28K bees gain will fund the Queen plus shipping then I would say it is their choice. However an egg loss due to hatching a queen is an odd calculation.
to each....
GG
 
#38 ·
Well good luck if it fails I’m sure there are plenty of people ready to sale more bees lol. $3000 for 100 queens is a small investment for 100 hives especially coming from a colony sliced 5 ways. Success % will significantly increase that’s not really even debatable.
 
#39 ·
Success % will significantly increase that’s not really even debatable.
I would debate that.
rember that hive growth is linear, about 500 bees a day growth (emerging rate-death rate=growth). So with a popper split (4+ frames of bees) you don't lose egg laying, the queen continues and the hive grows at about 2 frames a week. Thats the magic of the plamer brood factory... same volume, same amount of bees, dubble the brood out put

The advantage would be if the OP could buy queens before he could produce them locally (IE pre drones), then the splits get a head start. They may have a hard time plceing an order for that volume of spring queens, most are allready spoken for.

As for success rate, the OP has enuf stock to select local adaption form, and there overwinter survival rate will likely be much higher then the "sunbelt" early queens they can buy. When it comes to the north....a queen is not a queen is not a queen..
 
#40 · (Edited)
Did you read he wants to split twenty colonies out and instal queen cells I cannot comprehend how you can even say it would lead to as fast of build up as installing a mated queen. At first bees will emerge but you will eventually have a broodless colony or near broodless. And that’s all assuming it doesn’t rain and she gets properly mated right away.

As I’ve said good luck I personally know someone who got 3000 frames of bees and brood and made 1000 colonies with queencells. Care to guess how many hives he has left.

As for Palmer I’m pretty sure he posted about halfway through this thread he doesn’t expect his nucs to raise their own queens. But that’s my interpretation.
 
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