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Author Topic: Made splits yesterday!  (Read 5238 times)

Offline justgojumpit

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Made splits yesterday!
« on: June 17, 2009, 09:10:25 am »
I started out with 5 hives, and now I have 11! All but one of the hives started as nucs this spring.  A week ago, I stole 7 capped brood frames and 2 honey frames from among my hives and made a queenless hive for queen rearing.  I used eggs from a nuc that I received from a friend.  These bees are definitely qualified to be the egg donor hive.  I used the hopkins queen rearing method to create the queen cells.  On monday I split down all of my hives to 5-frame nucs, except for the queen donor hive, which I hope to get some honey from, and the queen rearing hive; those three colonies I split down became nine, three of the nucs keeping the original queen.  Last night, after leaving the bees queenless for a day, I gave the capped queen cells to my nucs as well as one to the cell builder hive.  In two weeks or so I should start to see eggs.  The nucs with queens will be donating frames of capped brood to bolster up the weaker nucs so they can all take off when the queen starts laying.

justgojumpit
Keeper of bees and builder of custom beekeeping equipment.

Offline MustbeeNuts

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #1 on: June 17, 2009, 09:51:23 am »
sounds good, keep us informed.
Each new day brings decisions,  these are  new branches on the tree of life.

Offline justgojumpit

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #2 on: June 17, 2009, 01:10:21 pm »
I'll check for eggs in two weeks.  Until then, the nucs stay closed.  The queenright nucs, which were made to be a little smaller, will likely need a larger box in a week or two.  Will let you know how it goes.

justgojumpit
Keeper of bees and builder of custom beekeeping equipment.

Offline jdpro5010

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #3 on: June 17, 2009, 01:42:19 pm »
Just expect maybe 2o to 25 percent loss or no return from mating flights I would think.

Offline MustbeeNuts

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2009, 02:31:06 pm »
I had one supersedure queen or a replacement either one, and she came back a virgin or never went, too much rain I think, Iwas getting nothing but drone cells, and she never did have a nice retinue, I replaced her with a store bought queen and  had an 10+ retinue in 5 days. There is much to be said about bees making there own replacements.
Each new day brings decisions,  these are  new branches on the tree of life.

Offline justgojumpit

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #5 on: June 17, 2009, 08:48:08 pm »
Whatever loss I get from the mating flights will not be the end of the world.  Those nucs which turn up queenless or with a poorly mated queen will simply be combined with other splits that could use the population boost.

justgojumpit
Keeper of bees and builder of custom beekeeping equipment.

Offline TwT

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2009, 09:17:19 pm »
are you feeding? anytime you are trying to raise queens you should be feeding also even in a flow, queens have the best chance to be good queens if they are feed well. I would have feed the mother hive atlest a week before taking eggs, but this is just the way I do it.. good luck!
THAT's ME TO THE LEFT JUST 5 MONTHS FROM NOW!!!!!!!!

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Offline jdpro5010

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2009, 12:23:17 pm »
Whatever loss I get from the mating flights will not be the end of the world.  Those nucs which turn up queenless or with a poorly mated queen will simply be combined with other splits that could use the population boost.

justgojumpit


Oh I definitely agree with you on this one any gain is a good gain. :-D

Offline justgojumpit

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Re: Made splits yesterday!
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2009, 09:02:47 pm »
I made sure the queen rearing hive had plenty of honey, so they had enough to feed the queen cells.  Other than that I did not feed.  There was a flow on.  The queen cells looked quite nice as well.  I hope to have better weather than we are having now by the time the queens hatch so that they will not have issues with mating.

justgojumpit
Keeper of bees and builder of custom beekeeping equipment.

 

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