Brushy Mountain's Question of the Month: April...

Question of the Month

Your hives have made it through winter and are now busting at the seams with bees. Do you continue to add hive bodies and build up your hive? Can you create a split? Should you worry about swarming?

An overwintered hive will begin brood production before winter comes to an end. By the time spring gets here, they will be high in population and ready for the nectar flow. This can lead to the possibility of swarming and requires attention from the beekeeper.
You have two options to help prevent overcrowding in the hive:

• You may continue to build up your hive by adding on the next story. This is an easy option and will build up your hive fast. If the queen is not in the bottom brood chamber, reverse the brood chambers and place honey supers above the brood chambers. Reduce the congestion by giving your bees room to move up into the hive and space for your queen to lay. You still must be cautious of swarm cells and dealing with a honey bound hive.
• Create a split. A split in its simplest form, is the transfer of several frames with mixed brood and frames capped with honey from your mother hive into a new hive. You would replace the transferred frames with empty frames, giving your mother hive space to continue growing. Splitting a colony gives you another hive with a more bees to help pollinate your garden and harvest honey.

Creating a split seems simple, but there are different variations (below is just one example how to create a split) and challenges involved. This is however, a great and convenient way to establish a new colony in your bee yard.

When making a split, you will want to have your equipment setup and ready for the transfer of frames. It is best to grab 4 or 5 frames of mixed brood in various stages of development. This will keep the population going as new bees are hatched and as larvae continues to develop. The hive's survival will be dependent upon the newly hatched bees and developing larvae. Frames of nectar and pollen will be essential in feeding the colony until they are able to increase in population.

When transferring the frames into the split, you do not want to brush off the nurse bees. The nurse bees will be beneficial to help feed and raise out the brood. The bees that are transferred from your mother hive are orientated to the mother hive. Once they fly from the split, they will return to the mother hive. You will want to transfer a good number of nurse bees over to the split because the majority of them will return to the mother hive. This may require you to shake a few extra frames of bees into the split. The bees that hatch out will become orientated to the split colony and will replace the nurse bees that returned to the mother hive.

Right now your split is queenless. You have the option of purchasing a fertilized queen (before you create the split) and introducing her to your split colony. It will take 5 to 7 days before your colony will become acclimated to her, but once she is released, she will begin laying. If you know that you transferred over frames of brood with eggs that are less than 3 days old, your split hive will realize that it is queenless and will begin to raise out their own queen from the fertilized eggs. There are numerous risks in allowing a colony to raise out their own queen.Dangers in raising out a new queen: low drone population, rainy weather, birds, car windshields, ect. Aside from these threats, it can take 2 to 3 weeks before the queen is able to begin laying (if she is properly fertilized). 

After transferring your frames and ensuring your split is queen right, they will continue to grow. The split is a new colony and should be treated as such. Add a feeder to the split and give them time to grow before checking on them. Your mother hive will need to be monitored to ensure it does not become overcrowded. Some beekeepers can create multiple splits from one hive, depending upon the strength of that colony. 

ORIGINAL SOURCE:  BRUSHY MOUNTAIN

The Big E...

My First Marked Queen...

The weather has been getting warmer finally, and while at first I had noticed my bees taking the opportunity to get out and stretch their wings, the last week or so, there seemed to be fewer and fewer bees leaving the hive.  I had been checking in with and feeding my bees on Saturdays for quite awhile, and there seemed to be plenty of bees in the hive when I opened it.  So I started to get nervous when as the weather got warmer, I wasn't seeing more and more bees leaving the hive.  The field bees that were coming and going were bringing in pollen, a good sign, but the traffic still seemed light.    

Last weekend we had beautiful weather, a great time to find out what's really going on in there. I'll be honest, I was nervous to do a full inspection of my hive, afraid to confirm I might be losing it.  So, I called on my support system, fellow HCBA members, Mike Feeney to help with the inspection and Sean Martin (also known as my husband) to take photos and have his shoulder ready just in case I needed to cry on it.  

Mike's first suggestion for me was to reverse the position of my inner cover.  I usually keep the notch on the inner cover facing the back of the hive so I have a rear entrance.  Well when all the bees are using the back door, it's much harder to tell how many are coming and going.  With both entrances facing the front of the hive, it's much easier for me to see who is coming and going without having to go into the beeyard.  I agreed to changing the position of my inner cover, and we went out to open my hive. 

At first glance, things did not look good.  As I feared, the number of bees in the hive appeared to be much fewer than the week before when I last fed them.  Determined to find out what was going on, we pulled out each frame and meticulously looked them over.  There were a lot of empty cells (too many if you ask me) but there were also plenty of pollen and syrup stores, one whole frame up top was almost completely full of syrup.  Unfortunately, there were no signs of brood... Until one of the last frames out of the top box!  Mike spotted some eggs in the lower cells and my spirits were lifted!  What a relief to see those eggs!  When we opened the bottom brood chamber, we found all the signs pointing toward "Queen Right"!  More eggs, and larvae, and then, her majesty herself!  Thank goodness.  Mike is like a beekeeping boy scout and is always prepared, so when we saw the queen, he was already to trap and mark her.  

I have never marked a queen in the past.  My beekeeping philosophy is that if I can see all the queen right signs, I don't look too hard for her because I fear I may do something while searching to compromise her well being.  But... there she was!  And we were prepared!  How often does that happen?  

 Ladies and gentlemen... Queen Daryl Palumbo

So we put everything back together, keeping all the brood in the center, and rearranging some frames so that some of the empty celled frames were closest to where she was laying.   

Switching the inner cover really seemed to help too.  Now I can see all the bees coming and going, and it already looks like more traffic than I originally thought.  

Plus, I know I'm queen right, so I can relax... until next week! 

Introducing My Queens...

This is the Martin Beeyard...

We're a small operation.

The hive on the left is our first hive, and the girls who live there over-wintered OK. I was very excited about that and thought it meant I had completed my first year as a successful beekeeper. So, mother nature decided to challenge me. On an inspection about two weeks ago, I noticed open queen cells, and that the frames were too full of honey, and worst of all... NO BROOD! I switched out some of the full frames with some built-out empty frames I had from last year. Maybe if there was a new queen in the hive, she just needed some space to lay? Left it alone for almost 5 days, and upon reinspection, still no brood. Not an egg in sight. I reached out to some of our experienced club members and the reply was unanimous, "RE-QUEEN! RE-QUEEN!" I got a new queen and installed her on Saturday. Introducing Queen Elizabeth Woodville II...

I'm going to check on her tomorrow and hope she's been accepted and freed by her people. Cross your fingers for me!

The hive on the right is our new hive. I installed a package of Italians from Tom on Easter weekend, and they're doing great so far. I've only done two inspections, and I've spotted the queen quickly and easily both times without really looking. This leads me to believe she's a bit of an exhibitionist. Please meet Queen Daryl Palumbo...

*A note on the size difference between my hives... I wanted to be sure I would be able to manage my first hive alone and was a little nervous about the size and weight of everything, so I opted to start with two medium hive bodies and an 8 frame hive. Initially this worked out great. When they needed more space, I added a third hive body, this seemed to prevent them from swarming. In the fall, they gave me 36 lbs. of delicious honey, and they over-wintered well. With an increased level of comfort going into my second year and second hive, I decided to go for deeps on our new 8 frame hive. Hopefully they'll both be a success!