Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: RangerBrad on May 06, 2012, 04:10:02 pm
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Hey folks, I have a wild queen that I would like to keep genetics from. she is such a proficient layer that I split her hive 4 ways on the 30Th of march. I gave her and 2 Sunkist's about 2 frames of brood a piece. and left the majority of a 2 hive body colony with a Sunkist cordovan queen. She has out layed them and now fills 1 deep, 1 shallow and is half a medium above the queen excluder filled with honey.
I have 6 hives but only 2 with enough bees to harvest honey this season, hers being one of them. I want to do a split with her hive however late splits in this area are very hard to build up as we have virtually no fall crop.
I was thinking of taking her and a couple of frames of brood and making a new hive and leaving the rest of the hive and foragers to make a new queen and produce honey. Is this a good idea or will this greatly effect the Honey production of her now existing hive? Thoughts please. Brad
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You should first let them grow to the size of honey production. It means at least 4 langstroth boxes.
When my yield begins, I move them to outer pastures and join hives so that every one has 6 boxes if they do not have.
I make nucs too, but I make them in the middle of summer when main hives are large. I split hives only to cut swarming and then I join them again.
I have mating nucs as much as productive nucs. First mating nug needs only one frames of bees. 10 days later the queen starts to lay and then I add a emerging brood frame. Then again the nuc continues 4 weeks and it own bees start to fill the nuc. It is time to add room to the nuc and join it to another nuc when I take a queen away.
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In Spring the hive needs every frame of bees to build up to a productive hive.
Every time when you split the hive, it moves its surpluss foraging 2 months away
I try to catch 100 kg honey per hive in one month. Our summer is short. It does not stand splitting.
After main yield I may split a big hive to 2 or 3 and they will be good winterers.
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