Shawna Roberts asks:  “When is the best time to make divides in Washington 
state? A friend of mine is writing a story, in which he has a beekeeper 
making divides June 4th, after a fine warm May.”

  Shawna, I’m up in the Puget Sound area and early June sounds good for 
making splits to me.  Up here there really isn’t a good flow until the 
blackberries come in about the end of June or beginning of July, unless you 
have your hives in a huge fruit orchard and the weather happens to 
cooperate which it rarely seems to do.  So by splitting in early June you 
give the hives you are going to make splits from a chance to gain 
sufficient strength to withstand pulling some frames from or splitting in 
half if that is what you are going to do.  You may have to feed the splits 
until the blackberries come in but once they do and the temperature is 
getting above 70 degrees F, which is when the nectar starts flowing, they 
have all that time of good flow to build up.  Earlier might be even better 
if you have colonies that are up to full strength.  The earlier you can get 
to it the better chance you have of those splits being strong enough to 
give you a honey crop from the blackberries.  But then also, the earlier 
you do it the more you are likely to have to feed them.  
  You do have to take the usual swarm precautions as you get into June but 
hey, you would have to do that if you weren’t going to make splits.  

Steve Noble   

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