Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: goertzen29 on May 13, 2010, 09:50:21 pm
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I opened up a hive I thought was about to swarm and wouldn't you know I found the queen on the first frame I looked at :). I made a split using her frame and a couple others.
I need some input here because I'm new at this...
Here's my plan. I removed the queen with only 2 frames of bees, and 3 frames of foundation. I removed all the swarm cells from the mother-hive. I want to wait about 4 days or so and go back into the mother hive, destroy all new queen cells then recombine the original queen with the hive using newspaper or a double screen board. Will this interruption work to prevent their desire to swarm? I dont want to split because I want strong hives going into clover bloom...
Any thoughts??
Jay
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split the old queen out and leave the old hive to requeen. the lack of brood will give the bees more time for honey gathering. the old queen wants to swarm if you put her back your just begging ger to go.
if the flow you want is within the next week or two i would just leave as you have it now.
just leave the queen cells in the old hive and let them go, nurse the old queen in a nuc and see what happens.
you get 2 hives and one makes alot of honey.
bailey
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I thought that hives without queens were kind of lazy, and unorganized...
my other reason for recombining is that I am completely out of equipment and really dont want to have 6 hives...I started this year with two and was planning to split and have four......now I have 6, just too many for my time and resources.
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Hives sell for 150 to 250. New woodenware can be bought for half that. Easy solution, in my opinion.
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In swarm cell situation you should make a false swarm:
Move the hive 10 feets
put in old site a new box with foundatiosn , the queen, brood frame and a food frame.
Old bees move to the old site. They start to draw foundations and believe that they have swarmed. The queen continues laying and make foragers for summer.
Don't destroy queen cells. Let the virgin emerge and srats to lay.
To get honey yield you must combine the hiveparts that nurserbees and foragers will be in balance.
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The way you did the split now is that you lost the queen's ability to lay and original hive did not loose its swarming fewer.
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Iddee, if you're suggesting selling a hive for money for the woodenware that fixes the money issue but not the time issue...I hadn't really thought of that though, good idea. I just really dont want to be a poor beekeeper b/c I dont have the time to do it right. I farm so alot of the busy farming times line up with the busy beekeeping times too:-\. Luckily my wife is interested in helping with the bees so I'm trying to teach her the little that I know which is pretty cool.
Finski, How does the old hive still have it's "swarming fever"....without a queen they wont swarm will they? I was hoping making them queenless would confuse/change their mentality.
And I plan on removing a couple frames of capped brood from the old hive to build up a couple other weaker hives, which would also open up room in the old hive for when I reintroduce the queen.
does that make sense?
thanks
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You can always put the queen in a nuc, or even all the queens in nucs... and then do a combine and let them raise a new queen. If you do all of this two weeks before the flow you'll get a much better crop than you would have otherwise.
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"You can always put the queen in a nuc, or even all the queens in nucs... and then do a combine and let them raise a new queen."
This statment confuses me a bit....what happens to the queen I remove and place in a nuc if they are raising their own queen?
And they cant raise a laying queen in 2 weeks (prior to the main flow) so are you saying they will gather more honey with a virgin queen or even just queen cells in place? I'm new at this but I always understood that the most productive hives were ones with good laying queens. But please correct me if I am misunderstanding.
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>This statment confuses me a bit....what happens to the queen I remove and place in a nuc if they are raising their own queen?
She is banked in the nuc. If you need a queen. You have one. If the nuc prospers and is bursting at the seams, either let it grow into hive or steal brood and stores from it to boost other hives and keep it as a spare queen. Come fall you can combine it if you like or overwinter it if you like.
5>And they cant raise a laying queen in 2 weeks (prior to the main flow) so are you saying they will gather more honey with a virgin queen or even just queen cells in place?
Try a search on "early foraging" and look at the studies, or just read the comb honey books out there. A hive with no brood to care for (e.g. no laying queen) will produce much more honey than one that is feeding and caring for brood. The young bees will be recruited to forage.
> I'm new at this but I always understood that the most productive hives were ones with good laying queens.
It's all in the timing.
> But please correct me if I am misunderstanding.
There is some more detail here:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#cutdown (http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#cutdown)
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Thank you all for your help, I'm always appreciative.
Jay
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Thanks for posting the article on splits - it is helping make sense of what split does what.