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Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:17:08 +0000 |
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The University of Michigan |
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Garrett Dodds wrote:
> I split my hives around the 1st of May.
> Putting the split with a new queen on top of the parent hive. These two
> build up together with the parent colony looking like a regular single
> queen colony and the split building up to a deep and a medium by the honey
> flow (mid June), both overflowing with bees. When the honey flow starts I
> go around and combine the two units (or take a split out of the parent hive
> to replace winter loses or to increase). I arrange the brood boxes so that
> the young brood is on the bottom and the sealed brood is on the top of the
> brood nest, with any supers put on top of the brood nest. After that I
> just add and add supers until I run out of supers or it's time to pull the
> honey. I rarely ever look at these hives after I combine them, maybe one
> or two per yard to get an idea of what's going on. These hives produce an
> average of 5 to 6 medium supers (to be conservative, the range is 4 to
> 10+). I have never seen one of these hives swarm, they just produce pound
> after pound of honey. By fall they are the size of a really strong single
> queen hive, with more honey stored for winter and normally twice the amount
> of pollen stored. They are over wintered in 3 deep hive bodies. And come
> out of the winter with huge populations, ready to be split when you can get
> the queens.
I do exactly the same as Garrett, and with the same results as far as
honey production. I would say, though, that I have had an occasional
swarm, so it is not the perfect panacea for that problem. If a swarm
emerges, it is *enormous*, and I just can only hope that I will be aware
of it and can hive it in time. That is quite an experience!
Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA
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