Get Over Nervousness About Your First Split
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- In this video I talk about split nerves, why we have them and how to get rid of them. We talk about what can go wrong when making a split, and how to avoid those specific issues.
#beekeeping #beekeeper #bees
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After watching many videos online, this is hands down the best one. Many are 30 minute+ minute videos, that aren’t clear. This is clear cut facts & to the point. Great video!
Thanks. ...I was VERY apprehensive about splitting my colonies. It got to the point where I had three deep boxes on each hive because I was too nervous about attempting a split but with your advice and after watching the other videos you have about making first time splits, I am ready to jump in.....wish me luck.
Thanks for another great video!!!! Getting ready to make my first split, and your video was just what I needed to hear.
Glad to have helped. Thanks for watching, Gary!
Great video and tips on splits. I can also relate to looking forward to the time away from beekeeping come winter and the excitement of getting into them come spring.
Thanks man. Now if the temperatures could just get and stay in the 50's and 60's up here I'd be truly happy.
Wow! Finally a super great video that gets right down to business on learned and experienced facts! I can do it now with a lot more confidence! Thank you so much! Loved it!!!
Thanks, Richard!
Woot. Thanks for the video!
Its fun to see what you are working on and see the bee yards with the pretty little boxes again. And you do have some good topics.
Thank you, Noah!
Timely video! I just did my first split yesterday, so I’ll keep this advice in mind
Awesome, I'm glad to have helped.
Thank you for your videos, glad your back recording and getting your bees to your new home 🐝🐝🐝
Thanks for the support!
I’m glad your bees are home. Great video. Thanks.
☮️🐝-Kirsten
Great upload! I am coming up on my first year to make splits, and this is warming to see.
Fantastic info as always!! I like how you actually nail down specific times or time frames of what to expect. We're picking up our colonies on Saturday morning!! Very excited 😁👍👍🏴☠️🏴☠️
That is exciting! This is your first year? If so, please, and I say this all of the time on this channel, please feel free to hit me up with any questions you might have. Comment on any video or brett@bkbees.com, I'm happy to help.
Brett I'm happy to say I have a new Queen and she's doing very well.Thank you for interest and your support.Glad to hear that you have nice neighbors to where you can put some hives.Thank you very much for all the info from you and in all your videos.
Thanks for the support, Dennis!
Thanks! I am about to make my first walk away split this weekend and was pretty nervous about it. Less so now!
Great video! Helped my confidence going into a split.
I just did my OTS on Sunday, even though I really didn't split my hives (I dispatched queens instead) since I'm not trying to gain more hives. Totally agree, once you do it you realize the bees know what they are doing.
Thank you sir. 1st one I’ve done in 35 years. Knew what to do, yet confidence was lost. Thank you sir.
Good to see a video of yours even if it was a older one. I did not know if it was my screen or what was going on. Those colonies to your right looked like they were made with a tilt forward to the front but the hive was leveled.I guess getting older my eyes are the first thing to go bad . Thanks
Great work -- as always.
Thank you.
Excellent work!
“Bearded beekeepers” … too funny. 😂. Thanks for the video!
Thank you for the good information
Thanks for the confidence bro 🫂
Solid. Thanks!
Spring is coming up in Australia so looking forward to doing my first split. Enjoying and learning from your video's. 👌
Good luck, Glen!
THANK YOU! That is just what I needed to hear at this moment. I get so insecure sometimes. Just have to do it.
This is exactly why I made this video :)
Brett,I liked the video.The info on walk away split was very useful.As a first year bee keeper with only one hive here in NorthEast Wisconsin I was very worried about my hive.There was so many bee's filling both brood boxes that 2wks ago I did make a split.I'm glad to say that both hives seem to be doing well.It looks likes a queen cell as been made.Still having cold nights in mid 20's.I'm feeding them with winter patties,some dry sugar and 2:1 sugar syrup.Am I doing the wright thing cause I'm only able to check them on the weekends.Brett your videos are great glad your more to the upper U.P. was a safe one.Thank you.
Yep, sounds good, other than the possibility that that queen might not be able to properly get mated, if it doesn't get warmer here really quickly. If that is the case, use the advice in this video and give them a frame of open brood, and then seek out a queen or queen cell. Let me know if you have any questions, I'm happy to help.
This was very helpful! I’ll be making my first splits within the next month.
Awesome. I'm very happy to have helped. Please let me know if you have any questions, and good luck with your bees!
I have a full box of brood and such at the bottom and then a second box that’s literally all honey frames and the third box I put on top when I wanted to stop swarming by adding space is still being drawn out. Should I move that empty box being drawn out to the middle and the one that’s all honey to the top? It’s 80 degrees out at the moment so warm.
Good help thanks 😊
Thanks for that very interesting. I have a question. I’m going to pick up a hive next week that need spitting. When would be the best time to do it. I was thinking the next day in the new site?
Very well done.Thank you.
Thanks, Howard!
Thanks for this video. I have been getting ready to try something very similar to a split like this. I have two full hives with Russian queens and a split (resource) hive with an Italian queen. The split hive lost one of the sides this winter (I took to much out of it prior to winter to ensure the other hives went in to winter stronger. My plan is to grab an egg frame from the good side of the split hive, then some brood and food frames from my two Russian hives in in attempt to raise a second Italian Queen (the first was mated with local drones last August so is really a local mutt :) ). Should be fun. You video answered a couple of questions I was worried about. Thank you.
Thankya, good luck with your splits!
Thanks for this video I feel like I can do this now !!
Amazing video!
I did a walkaway split.
with
frame of brood
frame of eggs
food
and a pint of simple syrup that I have refilled once so far
9 days in I had a real pretty queen cell.
I will check it in 4 days and see how they are doing
Sounds good.
Thanks for another great video Brett! Made two splits yesterday.
Very cool! That's exciting. I'm truly jealous :)
Thanks, if the queen doesn[t return from her flight can you recombine the hive with the original hive with the newspaper between the hives to make a stronger queen right hive?
been LOVING your videos, thank you!
What if I don't have two apiaries and still want to split?
Thanks for the information, great vlog
Thank you, Louise!
So I can split a colony into a nuc, and put it right next to the main Hive, is that what you're saying? as I thought it would have to be about 3 miles away..
Hi! Just finding your channel... this is my 9th Spring as a beek but I still feel like I don't know how to make a successful split. I'm in central Alabama and it's time to do something so planning to attempt in a few days. My big hive has 2 deeps and I just added another super (2 total), so my question is... if I split, will I still get honey from my big hive?
All good info Brett....I’m still having some pretty cold nights....but it’s getting closer...I’ve painted so many bee boxes that I’m sick of it....There’s a lot of things in bloom now.....and the leaves are trying to emerge...southwest Ohio....low thirties at night still....
Yeah, we're still really far from splitting here.
I hate painting so much. It's my least favorite thing to do as a beekeeper.
Hi, Bret, One mistake I have seen people make with splits is splitting before there is a drone population with which their virgin queen can mate. My rule of thumb is that I need to see drones coming and going from at least two of my hives. If my colonies have active drones the odds are that other colonies in the area do as well, providing the numbers and diversity of drones for a good mating. Stu
Absolutely, agreed, I definitely should have mentioned that. I might make a video on split mistakes I've made, which would include this one, my second or third year keeping bees.
I’ve done a split and there is a capped queen cell in the colony already, that has had the queen removed. How long before she emerges at this point do you think? 🙏🏻🐝
could always merge the old hive back with the split in the event of a failed mating flight. right? then try again?
Best video
Helpful video! Performed my first split this afternoon! (walkaway style) An overwintered deep with a medium on top. I took a frame of eggs and brood, 2 frames of brood, 3 frames of pollen and honey, and placed them in the new hive. I also took a medium frame and placed it in because it had a queen cup on the bottom of it with royal jelly in it. I never did find the queen though and I looked for 45 minutes. Should I check them in a few days to see which one has eggs in it then I'll know where the queen went.
Yep, perfect plan, check them 3 or 4 days after your split to see which one has cells and which one has eggs.
Also a good plan giving that split portion the queen cell, I'd bet that's the queenless portion, because it's more likely that the queen hid in the parent colony, on the side of the box or on the bottom board or whatever, than you missing her on a frame you were moving.
@@BKBees Got back in to inspect to hives today and found the queen did in fact make in the split hive, so the parent hive is queenless. I put a frame with eggs on it back into the parent hive (and left the queen in the split) per a local club member's advice.
Snow today had a hive swarm two days ago took two splits off it because it was worth the try I new weather was gonna suck but didn't really have much to loose
Yeah, might as well use those queen cells to your advantage, I totally agree.
Great video Brett! I'm from around your old stomping grounds (Silver Lake area). Bought some queens from you last year, and
they did great!! All 8 of my hives made it through the winter! Now I want to do some splits (After its done snowing!), is it better leave the old queen with the foragers, or leave the split with the foragers? I've heard the foragers are less likely to accept a new queen?
Thanks for all the videos, good luck in the U.P. eh!
Thanks for the support, Forrest. I know the Silver Lake area well, that was always a summer destination for me and my friends when we were kids.
In my opinion it's best to move the queen to the new spot, let the foragers return to the queenless portion, if you're doing walk away splits on a few hives. You're right in that foragers are more likely to be aggressive toward a queen, but, that's why we use queen candy releases when introducing new queens. If you bought one without candy in the cage, leave her caged in the hive for 3 or 4 days before releasing her. The foragers will be convinced she's worthy at that point.
The reason we move the queen to the new spot is, or reasons are: #1: This more accurately simulates a swarm, more effectively knocking the swarm impulse out of the hive. #2: Moving the queen to the new spot will keep some foragers with her, as opposed to moving brood frames without a queen, in which case every single forager will return to the old spot. #3: The majority of foragers returning to the old spot is good, as the population is likely to dip in the coming days/weeks, as the queenless hive becomes queenright. #4: the foragers returning to the portion that might be making queen cells is great, the incoming nectar and pollen will be a boon to the nutrition of the coming queen.
But honestly you can do it any way you want. I don't do too many "move the queen" splits at this point in my career, unless I see a hive that is ready to swarm. For the most part I go through in the spring and take brood frames and resources from every hive to get them to about 6 frames of bees and brood, equalizing all of my hives in the process of taking splits. You can do it like this as well. Up to you.
What do you think about the 2 frame nuc? Just adding 1 frame with either a queen cell or just eggs and maybe 1 frame of nurse bees shaken in?
I don't have any problem with that with a cell or queen, it's too small a group of bees to raise a good queen though, in my opinion.
Do be aware that a 2 framer will fill up really quickly. visit them weekly.
Just made my first splits today. Had a really strong hive over winter in a double brood box. 1 yr old queen is a rock star and they were on the verge of swarming so i took my original queen and split her into a NUC and moved her 5 miles away 3 days ago. Had three mated queens come in today and made 2 other splits into NUC boxes. Condensed everything else down to a single brood and put the 3 re queen in there. Of course there were a lot of queen cups that i destroyed but cheers to my first split. Fingers crossed.
Sounds like you did very well. Good luck with 'em!
How many frames of food are needed for 2 frames of brood in a new split?
Just down first split and am worried about mother colony loosing forager force. Its been 2 days and they havnt got many back yet
Are bees more aggressive while you are making a split? Is it just reality that you'll get stung or might a calm slow technique keep them calm?
HI
This is great thank you so much from Hampshire in the UK. I haven't been able to look at my hive due to the UK weather over the last 2 weeks. I've got a 2 brood box colony which had 10 swarm cells ( predominantly in one of the boxes) and a supercedure cell. Would you suggest your walk away split method in this situation?
Many thaks
Steve
I'd suggest a swarm simulation split. Find that queen and move her and bees/resources to a new location, plus a couple of extra shakes of bees. Remove all but two really nice cells in the parent colony to prevent swarming.
Thanks for the info, this really helps!
A couple of questions:
1. Do you also feed the split (new colony) a small piece of pollen patty or is that putting the cart before the horse since the queen may have not even emerged yet?
2. Shaking off the bees off of the brood frames, would you do this over a tub so the more docile nurse bees that don't fly off go into the new hive to keep the brood warm? The foragers would most likely be flying around just like when you do an alcohol wash which keep most of the foragers from going to the new colony and preventing any fighting.
You can feed your splits whatever you want, pollen is a good thing to provide if you aren't giving them bee bread frames. I always set aside my "split frames", which are the ones that are heavy with honey and bee bread, that eliminates my need to provide pollen sub.
I shake bees right over wherever they're going. If it's in a split I shake 'em over that box, if I'm shaking bees off of a frame to give to another colony I'll shake 'em right over the frames of their colony and take the frame away. You can shake them into a tub, and you're right, the foragers will get up quickly and go somewhere and the nurse bees will crawl around, but it works over the hive too.
@@BKBees Thanks for the clarification.
Say Brett just an update on my walk away split.Had two Queen cells but then we had a week of cold snap.The bee's must know that because of the cold no queen's were started.As of May 2nd the queen cells are capped off.There are alot of drones throughout the hive.I'll be inspecting the hive next weekend hopefully I'll have a new Queen.Thank you got
Pushed wrong button.Thank you for your input and support.
How did that work out? Sorry it took so long to respond but that might be good, I hope you have good new queen news for me!
Thank you, new bee keeper in Northern Alberta.
Have a strong hive and had ordered a bee package that was canceled due to mites.
I want to split the hive and purchase a mated queen.
Its April and it is still cold at nights, in the negative Celsius, will wait till middle of May to do so.
Just concerned that with so many bees in my original hive they will swarm, is it too early yet for them to swarm?
Great info and a new subscriber.
That's the struggle for northern beekeepers... If the nights are still that cold they aren't likely to swarm, but, when the nights are warmer there won't be much time before they do. I think your plan is a good one, but plan firstly to get into that hive as soon as is safe. For me that's a 60 degree sunny day after the nights are done freezing. Get in there, check for cells, if you see some, enact a split right away. Move the queen and some bees/resources off to the side and let the parent colony keep two of the cells they built, tear the rest down. You can then get on the phone with your queen provider and try to move it up a bit, or let them make a queen and requeen when your purchased queen shows up.
Sorry if that was long and convoluted. Please hit me up with any questions you might have. brett@bkbees.com is a better place for extended discussions, as I sometimes miss replies here.
@@BKBees Thank you for the great advice and I will get into it soon, days are warm and forecast looks good for a check.
Finally, someone who is talking about doing a split without a new queen present. Yes, this is my first split. Yes, I'm nervous about doing it. No, I don't have have a replacement queen. One question, I seem to have difficulty finding the queen in my hives. I know there is one present as the bees are thriving but I can't see her. In all the videos I've watched the person shows the frame and says there is the queen bee but for the life of me I can't see her. Can you give me some advice on what to look for when looking for the queen in a hive? Thanks.
It's really a practice in spotting the differences, scan your eyes across the frame paying attention to the bees that pop out to you. You'll start to notice lots of drones, and you'll have to train yourself to ignore those, but you'll also notice the queen eventually as she's usually a more uniform color, and much bigger. Practice makes perfect. I have had a couple of people talk about this really recently, I might just chat about it in a future video. Either way, good luck, and thanks for watching.
@@BKBees Thanks for the advice. I will practice. A video on this would be great!
Curious if you will put out a textbook of some kind for people to buy?
I think you have enough knowledge to do so.
I have thought about that one pretty hard over the last couple of years. The only reason I haven't done that before now is my migrating and fluctuating ideas as to what is best. At the very least if I do this I will have to come out with different editions. If I find a better way to do something or find an error in an old way I'd be forced to amend the text and publish a new edition. I don't think that's a deal breaker, but it's kept me from moving forward on it so far.
As far as ultimate material for beeks to learn from, the next project is a redo of the crash course, better videos, better audio, and a follow along text with quizzes are all in the plans for the near future.
new to bee keeping. I want to split the 5 hives that i have. When? (I live in the south, so it doesn't get really cold here.) How Far away? cross the yard? Thanks
It might be too late in the year to consider splitting, depending on where you're at and what the common practices in your area are. Even if it's not cold, if there's not available nectar there might not be drones flying to mate. Find out what locals are doing (seek out an experienced local or find a facebook group) and figure out if you have time yet this year. If not, just feed 'em and split 'em in the spring.
As far as how to split, I have a video called splitting your hive the easy way, I recommend watching that. As far as how far away to move your hive when splitting, I have a video called the importance of nurse bees that will explain that idea in detail. To summarize, when you move a hive less than a few miles the bees that have oriented to that spot (the foragers, older bees) will always return to the old location. That doesn't mean you can't move a hive just a few feet, you just have to be aware that you are going to lose foragers. Some people battle this problem by moving the queenright portion of the split to the new location a few feet away, that way the queenless portion gets the returning foragers. You don't have to think about it that deep though, just be aware that over the course of 24 hours after splitting, if the splits are within 3 miles of each other, there will be a population shift. Check the population the next day and adjust as needed.
This is a lot of information, feel free to message me an questions or requests for clarification that you have. I'm happy to help.
@@BKBees Thanks for the info
I tryed a split last year because my bee were constantly making swarm cells, I seen the queen in the nuc about a week later but she never returned. There are a lot of dragonflies where I live so I think they might have got her. I did an inspection today and there were some swarm cells but I want to wait until the nights are warmer before i try a split again. Do you think i should have put a honey super on today, it's a double deep hive and it already pretty packed?
Yeah, early in the year you want to err on the side of more room. If you think it's possible they could need another box, add it. They'll fill stuff quickly in the spring.
I'm in south east Michigan so do you think the low night temperature would be a problem if I add a honey super, last year I didnt add one until late may so I didnt realy think about it.
@@frankz.8359 no, it won't be a problem, and always err on the side of more room rather than less, in the spring. Once those dandelions pop I put honey boxes on all of my colonies. Right away.
Thanks , just added it. There was about a half dozen swarm cells, so I might be splitting it sooner than I planned.
I have heard that emergency cell queens are inferior to supercedure and swarm cell queens. Could you elaborate.
I don't believe that to be true at all, one of many long lived misconceptions. The bees work the cell the exact same way, with the same amount of nurse bee visits to the cell, same amount of development time, same everything, regardless of the situation. The quality of the queen is dependent upon the underlying genetics, and the available food and nurse bee workload during development, in my opinion. So, make sure your splits (the portions that are raising queens) are stacked with bees and food and they'll make awesome cells.
I've heard the queen from an emergency cell is inferior to the queen from a supercedure cell. Have you experienced anything like this doing a walk away split?
There are a lot of people that think that. Fortunately it is not true. A strong population of bees, the right aged larvae, and plenty of feed will determine the health of the queen cells, and queens. I was capturing virgins today as they emerged and they were so big they looked mated. They looked like that because I made sure my splits had those three things.
I don't even have anything to add here, Stefan took care of this one perfectly. Thanks, Steve for watching and commenting, and thanks, Stefan for the perfect answer!
great video. after a split how long before introducing a queen from queen breeder?
24 hours.
thank you sir.
What did you use for fuel for your smoker
Pet bedding. Pine shavings.
I’m in Texas so keep up the good work I like the videos
We had to start over due to some construction last year
What do you mean? That doesn't sound fun, whatever it is.
Snow in Midwest Tuesday so WAIT TO SPLIT. Give it a few weeks
Yup. Cold at least for another week for me. It'll be like 55 tomorrow and then straight cold for 7 days.
Stupid question but why don't the bees just return to the queen you split them from
Much easier to do a walk away splits with a foundation less drawn frame.
hi brett - tried sending u an email and got the mailer demon notice. what is a good email for you. thanks
brett@bkbees.com for bee stuff, brett@brettkozmadesigns.com for development stuff. What email did you try?
Split nerves...