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BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: DayValleyDahlias on January 16, 2008, 07:00:16 pm

Title: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: DayValleyDahlias on January 16, 2008, 07:00:16 pm
So, I was sitting next to the hive in the sun today watching the bees zoom in and out, and it occurred to me that there seems to be at this point in time, a lot of bees.  2 brood deeps.  I do not want to open the hive to disturb them til much closer to Springtime...

Questions:

What should I do if both bottom and top deeps are filled up...

Should I remove frames of honey and share it with the new packages that I am apparently getting?

Attempt a split? :?? to help prevent swarming...

I understand that if I do a split that I have to move the new hive at least 5 miles away for a month ??

Oh my...too many thoughts??


Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Kathyp on January 16, 2008, 07:04:34 pm
can't answer all your questions, but i can tell you that you don't have to move your split away.  mine went about 4 feet over on the other side of my existing hives.  i did have a bit of a drift problem, but that ended up being ok.

you are facing the same thing i am.  very full hive and concern about timing :-).  i am lucky.  nights in the 20's will probably take care of my overcrowding.  cindi was the one who pointed that out to me.
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: DayValleyDahlias on January 16, 2008, 08:46:02 pm
Oh yes, we are in the high 30's here, this Winter has been pretty mild with only one major storm so far...hhhmmmm...we'll see what happens!
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: annette on January 16, 2008, 10:52:55 pm
I made a split last spring and placed the new split just a few feet away from the old hive. No problem at all.  I suggest you read Michael Bush's web page on splits. I followed his advice and it went really well. I can tell you more in detail if you want.

Annette
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: LocustHoney on January 16, 2008, 11:14:35 pm
Just to echo what has already been said...I hived a swarm that came out of one of my hives and put it right in line with the other hives and had NO problem. I had all the other beeks in the area tell me the 5 mile thing but read on here that I could get by without doing that. It works.
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: DayValleyDahlias on January 17, 2008, 02:17:34 am
Oh great...awesome information thanks to you all!
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Sean Kelly on January 17, 2008, 05:31:06 am
I did my split a little different.  Basically took the top deep off of the bottom deep and put it on a new bottom board and stuff, placed it right next to the original.  Every day for a week I would shuffle the hives around to encourage drifting.  :-)  By the end of the week there were an even number of bees in each hive.
I also didn't buy a queen and just let the queenless hive make their own.  It was a gamble but worked and was really cool to see the development of a queenless hive to a queenright hive.
Went from one hive installed from a package to 3 months later having two hives in full production, both seem to be doing great still!
I'm gunna try the same thing again this year with the two packages I plan on ordering so I'll have 6 hives total.  Gunna leave my current hives alone so I can finally get some honey.  Keeping my fingers crossed!!!

Sean Kelly
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Scadsobees on January 17, 2008, 09:29:40 am
If you do a split and keep it nearby just make sure to shake extra nurse bees into the split.  The nurse bees are unlikely to drift back to the parent hive like the foragers will.  They can also become forager quicker if needed.

Depending on what you want I would use the frame for the package, that will give them a boost.  You can also rather than create a split, take some of the brood and honey and give that to the package to give it an even bigger boost.

I would think, however, that if it is too cold to inspect the hive that they aren't bringing all that much in.

Rick
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: DayValleyDahlias on January 17, 2008, 11:08:40 am
Sean Kelly, that was what I was imagining in my mind...Just separating the 2 deeps...happy it worked for you!~
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: indypartridge on January 17, 2008, 12:27:12 pm
Sean Kelly, that was what I was imagining in my mind...Just separating the 2 deeps...happy it worked for you!~
Interestingly, although he does NOT mention it on his page on splits, Michael Bush does suggest this very thing on his page on ""Lazy Beekeeping". Look at the very bottom of the page:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Sean Kelly on January 17, 2008, 02:15:25 pm
Sean Kelly, that was what I was imagining in my mind...Just separating the 2 deeps...happy it worked for you!~
Interestingly, although he does NOT mention it on his page on splits, Michael Bush does suggest this very thing on his page on ""Lazy Beekeeping". Look at the very bottom of the page:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm

Michael Bush actually recommended it to me.  Works great and now I'm recommending it too!  :-)

Sean Kelly
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Michael Bush on January 17, 2008, 09:22:27 pm
It's not the most reliable, but it's the easiest and works MOST of the time.  :)
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: johnnybigfish on January 17, 2008, 11:22:42 pm
Ok,...So correct me if I'm wrong..
This spring I can just take a 2 box hive,(with a big population of course) separate the boxes, get another top and bottom for the one box I move over a ways, and thats the way I can do a split? And I'll have another hive started?
your friend,
john
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Michael Bush on January 18, 2008, 07:53:12 pm
>and thats the way I can do a split?

You can.  It's not as reliable as making sure where the queen is and allowing for drift and making sure there is eggs in the one that needs to rear a queen.  But odds are it will work fine.
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Cindi on January 20, 2008, 12:13:51 pm
Interesting thread.  Many of us will be doing the splits this year, that is a great way of increasing colonies.  I know that I have 9 colonies that are going gung ho and then I will have to think about splitting and equalizing colonies.  Three of them have the Carniolan genes and they have that propensity to swarm.  Been there done that last year with a colony, man did they like to swarm.  But have used it to my advantage.  And I am sure that I will have messups this year, but that is all OK, this is how we learn.

Now, just a little piece of trivia.  Some I hear are very worried about the bees (when making splits) drifting back to the parent colony.  Yes, the older forager bees will drift back, to a large extent.

The young nurse bees.  Well, their entire lot in life at that time is to look after brood.  They haven't even entertained the thought of leaving their colonies yet.  They don't do that until they are of the forager age, they are devoted to the brood babies, what wonderful parents, hee, hee.  So they won't drift.  All they want to do is feed the larvae and keep the capped brood warm.

It seems to me that in some of my readings, Mark Winston's, The Biology of the Honeybee, that each larvae could be visited and inspected 1,926 times for a total of 72 minutes, but only fed during 143 visits, Lindauer (1952).  The time per feeding visit averaged 1.3 minutes for a total of 110 minute feeding time per larva, or slightly under 2% of its larval life.  There are other studies too, that shows higher values of visits,  (Lineburg, 1924; Kiwabara, 1947) one as high as 7,200 visits or a maximum of 1, 140 feeding visits per larva. That is staggaring, the amount of inspections and feeding.  Goes to show, they are very devoted to the inspection and rearing of brood.

Rick was mentioning to give shakes of bees to the split.  I think that is a good idea too, because the shakes of bees will probably be a good majority of young nurse bees, and they will stay where they are shaken off too.  We have lots of learning and work to be done this upcoming season.  Have fun, enjoy it, and most of all, have a great and wonderful day.  Cindi
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: rdy-b on January 20, 2008, 01:29:19 pm
DO a circle split and use the drift to your advantage -parent colony in center -three to five nucs( depending on the size of parent) surrounding the parent -split evenly -remove empty parent -leave bottom board of the parent in the center of the circle add cells or queens to the newly made up nucs -rotate nucs if necessary for equal distribution of field force -if you feel adventuresome try this method with a four way pallet for the parent and make up twelve to twenty nucs RDY-Bentrances facing toward the circle of course -food for thought -
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Cindi on January 20, 2008, 11:14:26 pm
Rdy-B.  OK, okay, so you have really caught my interest, tell us more.  Sounds like it might be a venue that I might travel down, with my experimentational personality.  I love to hear about this kind of stuff.  And...I would really appreciate (if only for me) (that is my self-centred side,  ;) :) :)) if you could elaborate, just a little, teeny, tiny bit more.  Best of a great day.  Cindi
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: rdy-b on January 21, 2008, 12:47:50 am
what part dont you get i will make sure you understand what i have posted -RDY-B
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Cindi on January 21, 2008, 12:53:54 am
RDY-B, I think where you confused me is talking of up to 20 nucs from the parent hive.  I thought you said only 3 to 5 nucs from the parent.  All I can picture is 5 hives in a circle with a blank bottomboard.  Is that the picture you are trying to present?  I am off to get ready for the night time sleep, so take your time to walk me through this a little better,  :) :) I'll read up in the morning when I awaken.   C.U. and have a great night, Cindi
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: rdy-b on January 21, 2008, 01:28:42 am
very simple three to five from the parent yes-but if the parent is a four way bee pallet -in other words a pallet of bees which would be four colonies then there would be four times the amount of resources and you would have four times the yield of nucs -the pallet is where you are confused -dont think about a pallet try to envision it with a single hive for the parent -but the method works ether way many beekeepers myself included keep our bees on special pallets instead of bottom boards -reason being we move them with fork lifts onto trucks at least one to three times a year i know now you know what a bee pallet is right any way the circle is the trick because they will orient to one of the nucs and you have distributed the frames of brood and honey evenly so if one has more field bees than the others simply rotate the boxes like the hands on a clock and you will have even distribution of bees and of resources -this works- for me -how do you do it  -RDY-B                           
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: rdy-b on January 21, 2008, 01:32:36 am
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/nucformation.gif    ;) 8-)                                                                                                                                                                           The main point of circle splits is making splits without having to move them to seperate locations                                 A way to eliminate or utilize the drifting that normally occurs. Since the old hive isn't there to go back to and the hives they can go to are equidistant from the original, they will (hopefully) equalize.
_____    Cindi hope you understand  8-) if not we can go through it agian RDY-B
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Cindi on January 21, 2008, 09:10:50 am
RDY-B.  Now, as I have said before, sleep does wonders for the mind and clarity.  I was re-reading the post(s) of yours.  It all makes very good sense now.  I like the idea of the circle splits and I have one colony that I think that I will give this a whirl with this year.  As I have said, this is now my year for experimentation with ideas that make sense to me -- and this one does.  This colony that I have in mind is the stronger of two that are gangbusters.  These two colonies have always been very strong, the others strong too, but not as such as these two.

I do not have any nuc boxes.  But what I have done when I have made a split before was to close up 1/3 of a deep with a thick styrofoam insert.  This reduces the size of the deep to that of a nuc, this allows me to move the styrofoam over as the number of bees increase, and to add a frame, when needed, eventually removing the styrofoam completely.  This works well, I have tried this one other time and it saves to eventually having to transfer the bees to a deep later.  Thanks for taking the time to explain more deeply to me what you were talking about.  Have a great and wonderful day, Cindi
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: beeginner on January 22, 2008, 03:06:47 am

I understand that if I do a split that I have to move the new hive at least 5 miles away for a month ??


Where did you get that from?

Me and the state inspecter make splits with his hives and most of them are not even a foot away!  You don't need to move a hive to make a split!
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: Michael Bush on January 22, 2008, 07:51:58 am
>You don't need to move a hive to make a split!

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#accountfordrift

I just shake extra bees in and assume half will return to the old hive or in an even split face them both to the old location and split them so that when they return to the old location there is nothing there but there is a hive just on each side.
Title: Re: Splits and all that stuff
Post by: DayValleyDahlias on January 22, 2008, 11:40:09 am
The person I bought my bees from told me that if I split I would have to move them 5 miles away for one month.  So, I am very happy to see, that this is not necessary after all.  Some people can make every aspect of beekeeping daunting!  Thanks to all you wise folk here, I almost "get it"..
 :-*