Ready For Splits! (But Are the Bees?)
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- Опубліковано 16 тра 2018
- The bee yard is ready, the beekeeper is ready, the new hives are ready... but are the bees ready? I go into each hive to and hope to find suitable frames of brood and eggs for splits into my new resource / double nuc hives.
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Thanks for watching! - Навчання та стиль
GUYS! I love all the comments and suggestions. You're helping me and ALSO thousands of other people reading the comments. However...
It would be very helpful if you could start your comment with a quick note about where you live. Knowing your location would help me get a better understanding of where your advice is coming from. THANK YOU!!!
Hey Jim, North Idaho here. Be patient brother. Feed the new hive. Help them draw those frames quicker. Balboa is fine, your conundrum is you need deeps for those resource hives (obviously). What if... You took Balboa's queen, put her in the top box, and put on a queen excluder so she can't go back down to the mediums? Make her lay up top. (I'd put in an upper entrance). Leave the Russians alone till summer, then build them up so they can winter over. Correct Splits take time in our region. It'll happen my fellow bee keeper. Keep up the good work.
No matter where the bees come from or where they are being kept, we as humans, have to understand the difference between ergonomics and or comfort design VS. bee behaviour. The bees do talk to us. My advice is coming from everywhere in the world, People keep bees everywhere. Listen and observe.
Neens - I am N Idaho as well CDA/Athol area. Good to see another around.
Idaho here too! Idaho falls area
I live in central Ohio and we are getting a great flow, we've had dandelions for a little over a month now and apple blossoms are in full bloom for a little over a week. I'd give it a couple weeks to a month, and you should be getting a good flow. My supers are almost filled, about 50lbs so far.
Wish you the best of luck with your bees, splitting is pretty easy, I'm sure you'll ace it.
Feed that package hive til they stop taking it. It will help the build quicker
Virginia here. To turn that hive into deeps, just stick the medium frames into deep boxes. Your girls will extend the comb under the bottom bars and make them deep depth. Then, you can gradually replace the medium hybrid frames with real deeps, and shave the extra off the mediums to use them as either traps, or supers, or whatever.
Never gonna stop watching these videos. One of my favorites to watch after work. If i had more land I'd totally do this if I could. Maybe one day though.
FusionRushTRUE it doesn’t take much land to raise bees. You can put 2-4 hives in the postage stamp backyard of the average American townhouse.
I like your bee yard design. I have 40 acres and I think I will create something like you did. Well done.
LOVE your videos. We started beekeeping at the same time. It's so fun to watch. I'm keeping bees in Germany - we're probably 4 weeks ahead of you and our winters are not as bad. I made 3 splits from my 3 hives (4 hives actually, but the 4th is without queen at the moment) so far. Good luck with your's! I'll keep watching the sequels.
Just an observation and suggestion. I notice as you inspect the hive you pull a frame out then inspect the rest one at a time. Thats great, however when you go to put the hive back together you slide each frame back into posittion one at a time. This increases your chances of crushing a queen 10 fold (in a ten frame hive that is). My suggestion is after you inspect a frame place it snugly up against the last frame you inspected then when you get done with all of the frames use your hive tool and leaver all of the frames back accross all at once. This method saves loads of time and mitigates the chances of crushing queens. It took me a while to remember to do it but now that its a habit my inspections are much faster.
I honestly thought you were going to do physical splits. I love this channel, not a beekeeper, but this channel is really wholesome and relaxes me after a long day. ❤️🐝
Looking good...don't mess with those babies, I say. This year has been wonky with weather and sun energy...bees are so connected to the suns energy. I think it's wise to wait till ya see far more action and if indeed any of those queen cells have produced. Could be why Russian hive seems to be devoid of eggs...that could be a new queen? If she hasn't flown and been "broodered" she won't produce eggs but she could have killed the old queen and those eggs you see were from the old queen? Keep your eyes on it, they could swarm.
Thinking your instincts to wait on splits is right on. Totally understand the desire to move forward though, especially where you are located..."short" bee season. Smiles and blessings...
Didn't you just add the top boxes last week? My guess is with things just getting going there and you adding the boxes, they are just finding their stride now with everything that is changing. The new package, you can try giving them a protein patty and some syrup if they are short on workers. Might kick them into a higher gear. I wouldn't fret about it much if they aren't ready to split then let them do their thing.
I've done several splits here already. I had to split a couple of my four frame nucs for the second time today actually. One of my queen building colonies had 6 queen cells ready to hatch today, I caught them perfectly and split them 5 ways and gave them the 6th one. She hatched just as I pulled the frame out, lol. I split them into mostly 4 frame nucs with some brood and bees from another resource hive to make up the shortfalls. I even got to eat a 6x8" slab of comb honey in the process. That made the hot sweaty work so worth it.
You have spring fever. It's hard to wait. I believe you can do it.
I have all Russian hives and I have found Queens on pollen frames every time for last 3 weeks they are laying brood frames all at different pace. I have them surrounded with 7 acres of alfalfa just starting to bloom and there has been tons of pollen in the tree lines the hives are sitting in and now the alfalfa is blooming. So much tree pollen they are all coated coming back to hives loaded down from pine tree pollen to mulberry pollen. things will be changing soon and already had to take top boxes and put on bottom of hives to get eggs/brood down where its supposed to be from their winter ball positioning. They started laying this spring in all the top boxes and tons of honey left over. Had one missing queen and had a huge queen cup so took that frame and made split to try raising own queen and ordered in another pure Russian queen to replace missing one from a awesome queen supplier over near your neck of the woods. His queens are unbelievable, made a split 3 weeks ago and the new queen laid 5 full frames of the perfect brood pattern in less than 3 weeks in this split . That was 3rd queen I have ordered from him and they have all over performed beyond my wildest dreams. I had lots of honey leftover from hives that didn't make it through winter so plenty to eat in my splits certainly helps but this is my first attempt to raise a queen from a emergency queen cellso verdict will be known in another week or so. I have lots of drones already hatched so shouldn't be problem with mating. But your new double resource hives seem like a good idea can't imagine them not working. Good luck and don't sweat the little things, they are going to do what they want to do anyway. Just got to be sneakier than they are and hope for the best.. Keep the videos coming.
From NW PA Zone 5b, looks like you are a little early. Safe splits here begin around 6/1.
As someone else suggested, don't be afraid to feed the light hives. I have 4 packages that went in about a week after yours and they are on constant feed right now. They are in single deeps and will remain on feed until they have filled it out. In your package hive, your first wave of brood should be JUST starting to emerge so you will have a bunch of young bees... lots of bellies to fill and not yet a lot of foragers bringing nectar in. You are about 2 weeks out yet from the first wave of brood being (just becoming) of natural age to forage. I'd revisit the idea of splitting them in about a month.
You have the nicest equipment! Here in Atlanta, we are in mid-flow. This is my 4th year and I usually split very aggressively using the Taranov method - an artificial shake swarm where the queen and young bees march into a new box and the original hive with the older fliers make a new queen. Your Balboa hive might make several queen cells and have enough to make 2 nucs. I learned very early what you're running into now-- I use all mediums so I never have to faff about with different sized frames. The shaken swarm method does help transition to a new sized frame, since the artificial swarm doesn't require transferring frames-- just the bees. I subbed because your video quality is among the best out there!
Good video. I think that you hit the nail on the head. You have young bees. As your colonies grow, you will have more foragers. Thus you will have more nectar. Look for the young bees doing orientation flights. After that, you should start seeing nectar starting to be stored as they transition from house bees to foragers.
I am in VA I had about 5 capped queen cells in one of my hives (4/17/18) I made two nucs off of that hive doing an artificial swarm with my current queen. On 4/29 I apparently had 2 queens hatch in one hive one of those queens swarmed, I caught that swarm and now have 3 hives and a nuc. The problem I am having is the bees drawing out comb fast enough to keep up, I have been feeding all my new hives since early April. ( I am using a deep with a med then plan of putting flow frames on top of that)
Vino Farm, Your new package should be getting liquid feed, as much as they want. The others could use some too. They don't have enough forager bees to bring it in, most of the bees are trying to keep brood warm. Your Italian hive middle. move the queen to the deep box, place a excluder between the medium's and the deep to keep her in the deep, once the brood hatches out of the mediums, remove the medium boxes and replace with deeps and drawn out comb without an excluder. You can use the medium's for honey supers later. The Russian hive is lacking a bit, I would feed them too. If they don't need it they won't take it. Plenty of pollen right now but they are also trying to build comb and feed themselves, they need the feed, 2 to 3 gallons per hive in the next two weeks if you want them to build comb and raise young. They also need the space to lay eggs and store nectar without becoming honey bound. You can build for splits in late June or try to harvest honey, but new hives building comb can't do both. Just my humble opinion. Best of luck! I live in the mountains of North East Pa. Your season start is about a week behind mine with your blooms.
Thank you. This video was shot a week ago. I have since added feed to the new package and they're taking it well. The middle Italian queen moved right up to the deep box a few days after this was shot. She went up on her own and started laying like crazy. All good there. The Russian hive is a mystery. I just went in there today and she was on the same frame walking in circles. No new eggs visible, but evidence that she had laid at some point... lots of new 2-3 day old larvae on a frame two frames over. Overall, not a lot of nectar coming in yet. I've never had bees this strong this early before so I've never experienced a spring flow. I don't know if it's coming, past or if we're in it now. It's not anything like the fall insane flow. I appreciate your suggestions!
Vino Farm, (Jim), Glad to hear your feeding those ladies. Also nice to hear that the Balboa hive is moving in the direction you would like. The Russian hive is an oddity, if they continue to drag their feet and build queen cells you might want to re-queen them. They might be trying to tell you something. If there are a lot of drones in there she might not be fertile any more. Just something to look at. I hope you don't mind me tossing my opinion in the ring from time to time, I just don't want to see you make a mistake that will cost you a hive, or halt your progress. Our northern season is just so short, we cant afford mistakes, as I am at a similar latitude as you.. You seem to be doing well, and I really enjoy watching your progress. Best of luck, have a great season.
Kingston, NY here. I would not intermingle medium and deep frames, you will have a mess. I don’t think the new hive should be split so soon. Let them bee for now.. Give the other two hives a week and check back inside. I will bet you will find lots of eggs and young larva, then do your splits. Sometimes the queens just slow down ......patience, the season is young.
Hey boss, Southern NY
Two more weeks, when they go from tree flowers to heavy dandelion they are going to be bursting at the seams! I can't wait either to see you use this split method!!!
From N Idaho
As for the buildup, it does not seem weird to me. IIRC you have fed for buildup in the past, so the speed of increase you are accustomed to is from being under feed. The slower buildup is likely more "natural" (as natural as bees in a thin box in the middle of a windy field can be anyway) =)
The queen is likely metering her laying to what is coming in.
The feed is for making them multiply unnaturally. (OR getting a head start from scratch when you get a package) So feed the hives whose job is to multiply. ie - new splits, nucs, resource hives.
Pick their job, act accordingly - treat them different for what you want them to do.
Did you consider moving the queen up the deep box and throwing on a queen excluder? Could that end up potentially quickening the process? Not sure just spitballing ideas here. Great video again like always!
Matt Elliott Yes, he has to do this.
My thoughts as well. I've had success doing this, makes it easier for inspection too, always know what box she should be found in.
That’s what I was thinking. Also have you thought about limiting your queens to 1 box vs 2 ... I am thinking of limiting mine to 1. Check out this guy ua-cam.com/video/YjyNcyVvbEI/v-deo.html Ps. Got my first 2 hive Two weeks ago!!
This is also what I immediately thought.
Are you saying put the Balboa queen in the top deep box and put the excluder UNDER the queen?
I think if you want to grow bees, you'll need to always feed them syrup, as much as they'll take, as often as they'll take it. Only stop feeding for the nectar flows you want to harvest from, when you put your honey supers on. Then your bee populations will always grow fast, and you can still harvest that golden rod flow in fall, with big bee populations to effectively bring in that nectar flow.
It is possible that the Russian queen in not laying due to 'Pollen block', this is the term given when the frames either side of the brood nest are full of pollen, preventing the brood nest from expanding, giving her no no space to lay new eggs. To fix this simply paced a empty drawn frame or foundation frame next to either side of the brood nest, maybe that'll fix your problem. I keep bees in Scotland.
Feed your bees. Pollen, sugar water and water. I want to be able to split this year but I need them built up first. Feed, feed, feed.
Using the Balboa hive, try the demaree method, using a queen excluder over the queen, supers above and above that a brood box with eggs. Your hive is still at full strength with nurse bees, they will go up to the frames with eggs and start drawing queen cells, which you can then use in your splits. The demaree can also be used to increase the amount of bees in the hive.
The russians maybe building a queen cup to swarm. The old queen will lay in the cup then leave. She stopped laying to get in shape to fly again. Once you have a larve in the queen cup you can split, because they may swarm. 6 hives CA.
Wait another week - I agree. Could even be 2 weeks, who knows with bees.
I Have a few suggestions for ya Vino Farm!
#1 your new Italian package, it needs to be fed for a week or to be given a couple honey frames, Spring is typically light on nectar and heavy pollen. So they are reducing their laying because there isn't a lot of nectar coming in. (The main Flow is a bit later for us, we have similar climates)
#2 The balboa hive, Depp under the mediums and put your queen down there with a queen excluder above her. She will start laying there and all the brood comb up top will hatch out and migrate down to the new brood chamber. And bam you have 2 fully drawn medium supers ready to go.
#3 The Russians, I have no idea why she isnt laying, Russians are just nuts. /s
Overall, I would divvy out any big honey frames to the other lighter hives or save them for the splits for resources when you do split. Because often you lose foragers and they will need some reserve as they build back up.
CanadianTropicana Good tips. I put syrup on the new package. Had a peek at the Balboa hive and she had already moved up and covered two deep frames with eggs. All is going well now! Thank you.
Vino Farm Ah! Excellent, they will be rocking in no time. Mid summer you will have more bees then you can imagine haha.
And I thought I was anxious to see splits... Good luck next week!
3:04 SPLIT LOL
Hoping for splits next week.. great videos... thanks for sharing
Just a thought your Russian hive is not making brood because the queen only makes brood when needed and your hive is full, Russian always have queen cups and a lot of drones. I would take the medium frame from balboa with larva shake off the bees. Take one frame of brood with the queen cups from Russian bees and all. Put them in your nuc hive then add one frame of honey from Russian with bees, and add two empty frames. There's your split. Let the Russian bees raise your Italian queen. Also if you worried about medium frame in your nuc don't worry the bees will draw out the comb on the bottom of the fram and fill in the space, you can remove it after the brood has hatch or put it back in your balboa hive or do away with it.
Thanks. This is a good idea.
I would have split using stores from the russians (minus the bees) and brood from Balboa. One or two medium frames in your Nucs wont really make that much difference as you can swap them out later. I would have fed your package bees or given them a full frame of stores from the Russians. The Russians may be telling you they don't think there is a flow - the queen will start laying when they start bringing in the nectar, despite blooms the temperature has to be right for the plants to produce nectar (or she just needs more space to lay). I would be tempted to take a few more frames of honey out of the Russian hive and freeze, then give them all a small feed to kickstart the process. A week can make a big difference though ;)
The new hive does seem to be putting energy directly into building up numbers rather than building stores. I think I would give them a honey and a pollen frame from the Russians, who seem to be very much into hoarding! It does seem like the Russian hive is most responsive to environmental factors, which makes sense considering the environment in which they originated. The successful hives would be the ones in which the growth was more closely regulated to available food and temperatures. I would treasure that ability since it is likely to prove important in your climate. It seems like they are crowded for space, too, given their hoarding tendency, which may be another reason the Queen is not laying. I would do the first split from them...a honey frame, a pollen frame, a brood frame, and empty frames to fill the box. One frame should have queen cups that the hive would be driven to use to make one of the larva into a queen.
Your issue with the medium to deep frame size seems fairly common across the bee keeping community...You should play around to invent an extender to make a medium into a deep size. You don't want to have to screw it on, but rather it should slide together...so the extender section would have thin metal or plastic guides glued or screwed to both sides of the two upper corners. They would extend beyond the frame to the two corners of the medium frame you are extending. I would use a thin metal wire on each corner that would be the actual support for the extension to go up and over the top of the medium being extended. Thus the guides are just serving to reduce wiggle, and the wires secure the two pieces. I would have a helper to assist when putting them together.
If you experiment with it, and work out any issues, you could probably make and sell them...
From N Idaho.
Or, you could still split the Balboa hive, AND migrate them to deep at the same time.
Take the deep honey frame, as much pollen on a deep as you can, and the queen. Put them in half of the resource hive. Shake 1-2 medium frames worth of bees into the nuc. Add 2-3 foundation/starter strip frames to fill. Mine seem to really LOVE the starter strips (wired with 8lb fishing line). Consider feeding as needed, but that frame looked pretty stocked.
If you can, even out the eggs between the 2 medium boxes. Place the 8frame deep beneath them. (optional to give a single medium another base and lid - new hive) Bees will make queen cells in the mediums (Balboa stock!)
Are your med frames plastic foundation? IF not, QC's can be cut and distributed to new splits.
Consider light feeding as needed.
At day 18/19 Move the medium frames with queen cells to deeps, Add excluder btwn deep and med. all the old brood should have hatched or nearly hatched out by now.This is 1-2 days before the queen will hatch. After hatching, remove the med frames from deep and replace with deep frames. They won't build too much on the bottom of the meds if its only in the deep for a few days.
Give the virgin 4-5 days to mature and go out on a mating flight. Balboa queen should have filled her nuc to the brim by now, so pull a frame of capped, and 1 frame of egg/larvae out of resources and put in the 8 frame.
At this point, you should have a virgin out mating - if she makes it back, she will dismantle any cells made from the larvae you transferred. All your med frames should be clear of brood, and above a queen excluder, and this hive should have a frame of emerging brood, as if the queen never left. The virgin will either return and start laying, or they will start over with new queen cells from the egg frame. Queen Balboa jr will either be pissed, or thrilled to have 2 new frames to lay up.
Great drone footage!
Go ahead and force with mediums into the deeps. They will build under the med bottom bar, usually drone brood, which you can then use to check for mites.
Maybe you should feed the new package hive with syrup
Dragon King I went and fed them today!
Feed them girls !!
Yes I think new package hive doesn't have enough foragers yet and they are using all the nectar that comes in for new comb, food, brood...
I found your channel , from your flow hive . I hope you change your mind about adding it to one of your splits or original hives . Allways a fan
I live in northeastern Ohio and my hives are at the same level as yours. I started putting a small pollen paddy in. Mine do have eggs though. But I too thought mine would be all drawn out by now.
I'm moving to all mediums as much as possible. The weight factor is the main reason behind that. Since I intend to sell bees at some point, I am keeping deeps for that purpose, since it seems like most people go that route (I did, when I first started) and the nuc boxes are generally for deeps. But I intend to also have mediums available for people like me who are making that change.
For buildup, if you feed them syrup until they stop taking it, they'll likely build up more quickly. Ditto for pollen substitute, although I don't use it down here in Florida; we got pollen started the first week of February. Funny story: yesterday I'm out putting in the last of the strawberries, and I hear what sounds like a swarm. I track it back to one of the trees at the front, and I'm standing there, wondering where the swarm is. No a swarm: tons of my bees gathering up pollen off it. The way the tree is situated with a couple more kind of triangulating it, it enhanced the noise they were making to the point it was loud enough to sound like a swarm.
What I've done for splits is use a monster survivor hive: it currently has three deeps and two mediums (the flow is on here). I've made two splits from it so far: one is doing very nicely. The other, despite my count of five queen cells two weeks ago, and then none last week, seems to be queenless, alas. It's possible I just didn't spot her because it's been raining here since Sunday and it was kind of dark when I checked this evening, but I saw no eggs/larvae in there either. I hope your hives build up enough to allow you to split and increase your colony count.
Greetings from N Idaho!
If you want to migrate the Balboa Italians to 8 frame deep, you need to move the boxes around and add a queen excluder. You'll need to nail 1.5-2in spacers on both sides of the 8 frame for a little while, top and bottom.
Find the Queen - if she is in a medium box, put that box on the bottom, Stack the 8 frame on top of that, then the Excluder, and put the final medium on top of the 8 frame. (thats why all the spacers) in 3 weeks, all brood will be out of the medium, and it becomes purely a honey super. Repeat with the other med when you find queen in the deeps.
Important! drill a 3/8 escape hole in the medium boxes for Drones! (can be plugged later with dowels if you don't like it)
Its not pretty, and it takes time, but it will migrate your brood to the deep frames, and the mediums to supers.
Or, you can cage the queen, put both meds above the 8 frame, and release her into the deep with the QE between them. (remember to drill that escape hole!)
The nurse bees will stay with existing brood until it hatches, but the smell of new laying will draw many down to where the queen is. Eventually, all the brood will hatch out of the mediums and migrate to cover the new brood below.
Transport the queen into the medium box then trap her in with a queen excluder. Dandelions can look like they're blooming from a distance but they are not always producing pollen or nectar. The buds on an apple tree will provide nectar to approximately 10 bees. Once the flowers fully pollinated it stops producing nectar and starts producing an apple.
Looks like you should breed balboa hive for more queens and try to replace your other two queens, honestly, those queens look pretty sluggish at laying. Put queen balboa into the 8frame deep and then place the deep in place of where balboa hive used to be so the foragers fill up the numbers. The two mediums can become 2 splits the bees will breed new queen.
Location: Sydney, Australia. I agree, when in doubt, think like a professional beekeeper. Most professionals requeen each hive at the start of the season.
Cali/high desert.... feed ur bees! What you see & what they see may not the same.
Bakersfield,California.. i would take a frame of honey and pollen from one of the others and put in the package hive. I been doing some walk away splits. Only have twenty hives so no expert. But,I think next year I will make a pile of queens cells before splitting . As not to have the lag time when they make there own queen(s)
p.s. Wont guarantee it. BUT this time of year most weaker boxes will accept bees from wherever. I would consider swapping Balboa and package locations. All the forager bees will return to old location,which now would be the package location. I have tried that 4 times. Three times went well. Once had to move them back a hour latter,etc etc etc
Aren't u able to put a frame from a deep into 2 medium boxes? It looks like it would fit by the look in the video.
Do you have any clover in those fields near the hives? Seems like an excellent area to put a few patches, unless that's hay/grass fodder for other animals.
I would stick a box out with lemon grass and drawn frames just in case you miss splitting and they swarm
or even catch some wild bees...
After climbing the same pear tree for like the 5th time I decided to put a deer stand with a bee hive up in it about 5 feet off the ground. Great idea I catch em the easy way now. The drawback is if there's one swarm already in the box a second will go up in the tree. So I put two boxes. Two deer stands.
I have to drop boxes at our hunting camp I caught a swarm in this spot last year so I put a box in the exact same spot and then put one us a little bit down the way and I've caught a swarm in the exact same spot that I did last year so when we go next week to get them I'm going to move my other box to the exact same spot because down here they swarm all through June to
Would be interesting to know if you got a second swarm in the same spot.?
I did in the very same spot and same tree
Wisconsin: In Russian right, a lot of drone comb at the bottom of the frame is a sign they are planning on swarming. And for the balboa hive I would just cover one half of the nuc boxes with burlap or something and place the medium on top and they will work their way down into the bottom when they run out of space.
The Russians looked like that all summer last year. Lots of swarm cups and queen cups and they never swarmed. I hear they just make them "in case" but might never use them.
I have the same issue. No honey but tons of pollen. I hope to split in June.
Jim,
I love your videos and the passion you have for beekeeping. I am in the research phase of beginning my journey into keeping bees. Could you recommend some books that would be great for someone with zero experience. Thanks so much can’t wait tell the spilts happen.
I think id stick with all one size..would be much easier movin frames around where needed..seems like its allready causing you unneeded stress.. other than that..im very impressed with yer operation..👍👍
Southeastern Michigan - I am re-starting beekeeping after many years. One thing I have done this time around is start with all Mediums for everything to make it easier to move frames around when needed.
I'm going with mediums too. However, since I'm just starting its hard to get enough brood built into the mediums. My plan is to reverse the boxes with the medium on the bottom and an excluder between to allow the brood to hatch out. I'll look into another suggestion made here to use an upper entrance. Maybe that'll get the queen into the medium box.
Give the honey frame you took from the Russian hive and give it to the package hive.
I thought of that while I was editing the video! I didn't think of it at the time.
You need to wait. You are rushing your splits. I am not seeing much drone brood and not enough bees. They make queen cups all the time it’s just what they do. They will not fill the cups until they are ready to swarm. If you make splits right now you will have weak hives and nothing for the queens to breed with. You need 4 capped brood frames in each hive. That way you can pull one frame of capped brood from each box with bees. Give it a week for a lot of the bees to hatch. Then put in a frame of eggs from the hive you want to make queens from.
I think it may have been garden fork but one of these bee channels ended an episode with slow motion HD footage of the landing board and sky around and it was one of the most epic things ever. I haven’t been able to find it since...anybody know what I’m talking about by chance? I’m at work for the next week and a half and miss my girls!
If you have Instagram, follow FlowHive or Girlnextdoorhoney. They have some awesome slow mo videos
Here in southeastern US ours are acting funny resources are there but not a lot of new eggs. Fat beautiful queens 🤔👍
I would feed, feed,feed
You could give the new package a frame of honey from the Russians.
is it possible your package already swarmed? easy to miss. i am planning on setting my swarm traps in Pa pot in march. countless factors involved in predicting swarms. i plan to be ready for swarms instead of splitting. i feel the bees are better prepared for swarm vs a split.
Jim, check out Devan Rawn beekeeping channel from Southern Ontario if you have not already done so. I am in Alabama and not keeping at the moment but I'm researching his process and other's who use similar methods and will go that route when starting back. Boxes are packed with bees and supers full of honey. Amazing what he has done with one brood chamber. Queens use every inch of space.
Devan has some great videos. I have thought about trying his single box method, but after getting through last winter with double boxes, I'm thinking I might just stick to that for now. I'm not a honey producer. I'm just trying to keep bees alive.
I love watching Devan's videos, as well, and learn a lot, but I'm down in Atlanta and raising bees in this climate compared to Ontario is a bit different, weather wise. I've always been told to take advice from beekeepers near where you live. I don't know, all beekeepers do things so differently you just have to experience things on your own, I guess, and see what works and doesn't.
How many frames of brood do you need to split?
the flow not really going yet that why queens dont lay to much i would feed for a week or two
Hard to believe you're still using the alpha bravo charlie delta stuff. That all lasted one season for me and got all the way to "Zeta" and was using Alpha A, Alpha B etc for splits. It got crazy especially when the original A,B,C queens were all dead or had superceded or swarmed.
You find that you're not naming the bees but are naming the boxes after a while. At least for me. I still have bottom boards with the names of my original named hives on them.
When it comes to the genetics of any given queen you find that half is out of your control. The "drones" half. Am super lucky in that the neighboring beekeepers to me are really good ones. We're obviously sharing genetics and it's working out great here. C-U Illinois.
Mike, Not sure what you mean by "alpha bravo charlie delta stuff". I only have one hive with a name and it's only gone through one generation. Balboa-->Balboa's Daughter.
I have a phobia of all types of bees wasp and yellow jacket how can you help me without actually being with one because they chase me a circle me and buzzing disturbes me
Add extra wax to the plastic foundation. You’ll be surprised with the results!
It's coated in wax. Definitely.
You should just let the two frames go with your idea😘
They need food! Give them every night syrup of 0.5l and you see a big change. Good luck ☺🙄
Great video again :)
What's the name of the song in the beginning? Shazam and Soundhound only give me similar sounding stuff (I feel like they're making fun of me).
(sorry for this ignorant question while everybody is talking about beekeeping...)
Dead Cat by Gavin Luke It's on Epidemic Sound.
And my body reacts to fight or flight mode when i see them come near me
Feed package
Enjoy the videos. Question; do you prefer Russian or italians
Phil Janik Italians store more honey. Russians seem to store what they need and are pretty frugal with it. Italians just don't stop storing. Russians are supposed to be better in cold climates and better with varroa. I think it depends on each individual hive. Italians are more mellow. Russians are no more 'aggressive' but they do move faster and are more jumpy. I get stung by both equally.
I sort of prefer Italians at the moment.
What ever happened to your swarm trap?
Still empty. I just cleaned out a huge mouse nest yesterday and put in swarm lure. We're a few weeks away from swarm season.
Too bad a medium isn't actually half a deep then you could pull out frames from both bottom boxes and drop in deeps.
I don't understand why you leave all that burr comb on those frames.
I take it off, they put it back on. If I don't take it off, they don't have to waste energy putting it back on. If it gets out of hand, I remove it. No big deal.
Why aren't you feeding that new package?
Because in about two weeks after installation, they took off and filled a deep box before it even got warm enough to put syrup on. Then I figured the flow had started and they were OK. Now I guess they might need a little help.
Gonna preface this by saying I'm simply a viewer, but the Blaboa Frankenhive is killing my OCD and the thought of mixing medium frames and deep frames is making me sweat in panic.... Also, isn't that Frankenhive gonna be odd to insulate when late fall/winter rolls around?
As soon as she moves up and the mediums hatch, the mediums will be phased out. I'm hoping it's only like this for a month or so.
Vino Farm Oh thank goodness. Hopefully Queen Balboa cooperates with your plan. I remember watching the original queen and the happiness of the birth of the new queen... even though ya kinda Thunder Dome'd that other queen in her hive. That is literally YOUR queen. YOUR hive and YOUR bee's. I hope her lineage propagates amd makes ya a thriving yard.
Weren’t your Russian queens late starters last year too?
They were pretty quick to build, but then they just stop. They get to a certain size and take a break. The hive looks great! But the queen just stopped laying. I hear they do that.
especially this year you are way early to think about splits.
I'm just excited to get started. I've never had hives this full this early in the year. I have patience!
I'm about 20 miles outside of Boston (Sherborn) and some folks are doing splits this week. We just started seeing Black Locust bloom this week, when our flow starts...you are prob just a few days to week behind us. I'm planning on doing a 2 frame walk away split myself tomorrow (off a package hive). Good luck a keep the videos coming....GREAT WORK!
Me too....best time for splits is swarm season ....in WI it's generally 1st - 2nd week of June. Dandelion season is brood rearing buildup season..... Nectar flow starts after that with the clover and all the other flowering plants in summer. I'm going to try grafting this year so I have preferred queens for the splits....timing is everthing. Good luck.
I've already split my hives because I had charged queen cells in them and i'm in Scotland were the temperature rarely rises above 20 degrees Celsius.
Force the queen up with the excluder
You also may want to supper your resource hive untill the brood hatches and and drifts to the middle and simply block off the middle of the one side of the resorce hive with card board and start the bottom 4 frame with a queen cell or queen
Also if you ad an internal feeder you can reduce frames and space for needed resource with pollen patty two queens producing is faster
Russian queen didnt take a brake,she just stoped because there is no nectar in nature.
She stopped laying during the 2 weeks of dandelion and apple blossom season. There was nectar.
I come from the area that works with such queens ,so i tend to think i have some experiance.In short,i think your russian queen is " Карпатка" breed. Stoping during nectar season is strange to say the least.
I would love to talk about bees cause it is my passion. Try to find Apis mellifera carnica for your beeyard,put them in ,sit back and enjoy :)
Sale Belich I am interested in your opinion on why she would stop in the middle of nectar season. I'm not arguing. I would really like to know. This hive has always been very strange.
Sale Belich Also, I installed two new Carniolan queens in my last video.
Well done on Carniolan queens ! No,no argue intended ,we are just talking like fellow beekeepers.
I work with somewhere around of 100 hives,and never and i mean never have seen queen stops laying while nectar is in nature. That is what i find strange and i have to think that either that russian queen is either old and already at her end,or she havent been mated properly or you bought it from someone and she hasnt been raised properly.
Sometimes some beekeepers while they are running for profit tend to put a lot of queen sells in productive hives. What happends? Too much queens sells,not enough bees to take care of them. Queens you do get that way are not reliable and they dont last very long.
While ago i bought few queens,thinking i will save some time and that i will buy better quality queens for my hives. That showed up to be such a mistake. So i produce my own queens .
Get all honey out u wan t queen layin if u want to split FEED FEED FEED
Those Russians are goin to swarm n next two 3 weeks
Mayb less