Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: bill on October 02, 2005, 02:49:04 pm

Title: split next spring
Post by: bill on October 02, 2005, 02:49:04 pm
I now have three hives if everything goes through the winter, we have pretty mild winters here, so I assume they will get through. I want to get up to six  hives going next year. if I split the strong hive  I was thinking it might recover quickly enough to make honey in each half. Now to get the others I am going make nucs out of the smaller hives and not expect to get honey. Is this a good strategy or would something else give me more honey. I am determined to get enough honey to supply our local farmers market  at least next year. so let me know what you think
Title: split next spring
Post by: thegolfpsycho on October 02, 2005, 10:19:24 pm
Aye, theres the rub!!  One large colony will make more surplus honey than 2 smaller ones.  Obviously, you can build up the colony to split, then give the splits some pollen and drawn comb, and it's off to the races.  The key is to have the workforce ready to work the nectar.  Not to build up on the flow.  Did you make a note of the dates the nectar flows in your area started and ended?  Kinda important to have a few queens available too.  Letting your splits raise their own queens delays buildup and can cause you to miss the surplus.
Title: split next spring
Post by: bill on October 02, 2005, 10:36:58 pm
They fly a lot in the winter here, as our winters are very mild, even compared to northern texas. there is always something growing whether it is enough to constitute a flow. the large hive has made about three small supers full  this year but two of them is still on the hive. I used a bunch of their frames this year to make nukes,probably knocking them back quite a ways. so if they are left alone they should do a lot better this year. I might just keep them together and increase from the smaller hives . but the other two hives are doing good now. I might wait until they have pretty well increased  and are going to be a big hive and then either split them or make nukes. If I did split the big hive , It has a huge population, I was thinking it sould recover in a long west texas summer and still produce some honey. what I don't want to do is make all bees and no honey next year..... thanks
Title: split next spring
Post by: Michael Bush on October 03, 2005, 08:11:24 am
If you do cutdown splits somewhere betweentwo weeks before the main flow and the start of the main flow you'll get MORE honey AND splits.  You'll remove the responsibility of caring for all of that open brood from the original hive thus freeing all the bees to be field bees.

Timing is everything.  If you split at the right time in the right way you'll get MORE honey.  If you split at other times in other ways you'll get little or NO honey.