On Thu, 27 Apr 1995, Eric Abell wrote: > Allen, > > > > > We split starting May 1. If you wait longer, they have dwindled from > > overpopulation and lack of sources, and splitting gets tough. > > I have never been entirely happy with my splits. How about sharing your > method with us? Here are a few thoughts: -Spring Management There are a number of aspects to spring management of colonies. The goals are simple: to maximize honey production, to maintain or increase colonies, and to make efficive use of resources: namely, management, labour, time, vehicles and fuel, feed, bees, and hives. The goal is also to minimize risk of loss due to missing a honey flow, swarming, chilling of splits, poor wintering , disease, or inability to manage the work schedule. Activities are interrelated and include splitting, disease detection and control, medication, mite treatments and surveys, scraping of floors and hive equipment, moving yards, feeding, removing excess feed, requeening, and adding space as required. A number of these activities often take place on a single visit to the yard. Sometimes a specialised team with unique equipment might handle one task, while a separate team handles another task in the same yard, or somewhere else in the outfit. Splitting There are a number of reasons for making splits and a number of ways of making them. The main reasons for making splits are: 1.) to increase the number of honey producing hives either in the current year or in the following year 2.) To reduce the size of colonies to discourage swarming and to put off 'peaking' until the expected flow. 3.) Control of mites 4.) To produce income from sale of nucs. There are many ways to make splits, but most ways are variations on the following: 1.) Splitting a two storey hive in half and 2.) selecting brood and feed from a colony (or colonies) and making up nucs. The timing and size of the splits will determine whether and how much honey the splits will make in the first year and whether they will be trouble free or a waste of time, effort and bees. Generally the earlier and the larger the split, the better, once pollen and nectar are available in the field. Adequate feed - both pollen and syrup or honey - must be available at all times in copious amounts in splits for them to be successful. Dry, hard capped combs of old feed may possibly be okay for a full strength colony, but nucs need liquid feed open, and near the brood. Honey in the hive is not the same as honey in the bee. If there is no nectar in open cells around the brood, your bees are starving, no matter that there may be a flow in progress, or that the hive is heavy. Warmth is essential. Use entrance reducers until June, and don't expect overly small splits to amount to anything. Remember - you can always go back and split again and again, but not if the colony doesn't prosper. Ideally, bees seem to do best when they occupy about 80 or 100% of their hive space without crowding and burr comb building (when observed on a 72 degree day), and they have a little empty comb to work in. The challenge in beekeeping is that this condition is not at all stable, and the colony size often doubles. This happens almost overnight when a large hatch of brood comes out. (See discussion of queens and laying cycles). Being able to anticipate when a hatch or a flow will demand more space is an art. Assessing Hives for Splitting or Reversing Brood must be available in all stages in both boxes of a two storey hive for the first two types of splits to work well. One way of ensuring this is to reverse at least a week before splitting. Hives for Side by side and takeway splits should be selected by tipping the two boxes forward and looking on the bottom bars and floor. If on a 50 degree day there are not bees covering the bottoms of at least six frames, the hive may be reversed. This is advisable only if there are bees covering several bottom bars, indicating some brood in the lower box. They may possibly need to be split later. Reversing ensures brood will be raised in both boxes - particularly with older queens, which are less inclined to lay throughout the hive, and expands the brood area. It also encourages reorganizing of feed in the hive and is thus stimulative. Moreover it ensures that the lower parts of all frames are used by the bees, reduces the honey barrier at the top of the hive, and makes the beekeeper realise when a hive is too light (starving) or too heavy (honey bound). Be very careful about reversing hives that are not covering combs in both boxes, because a very real danger for damage to the brood and colony exists if the weather is at all cool. Comparing 'Side by Side' Splits with 'Take-away' Splits and 'Progressive' Splits The first two types of splits are best done in early May. In our country (Central Alberta) splits made before May tenth seem to produce about as well as other similar colonies which are not split. We always place a made-up empty brood chamber under each half of these two types of splits to allow for expansion and to allow room in case the split is made from the heavy half of the overwintered hive. The extra space is below, and thus does not cause a loss of heat. We then reverse and feed again as soon as the queen is laying and weather and flow conditions warrant. Frame feeders are used both top and bottom and we feed liberally. We aim to keep our doubles at about 45 to 50 kg total weight all spring. This breaks down to 10 + 10 for boxes and combs, 2-4 for bees, 5 for lid and floor, and the balance - 20 kg or so, for pollen and honey. This is about 8 frames of feed. On all our splits, we use entrance reducers until June. * * * * * * * * * * * Side by side splits are splits made by placing two floors close together directly in front of a two storey existing wintered hive and placing one empty brood box on each new floor. One half of the old colony then goes on top of each. See diagram below. The primary use of this method is for splitting and adding mated queens. For cells, the other methods detailed below are usually superior. In the case of a four pack palletized operation, splits can be made on the ground in front. Of necessity, the new hives will form a close spaced row of four in front of the pallet. In the case that one hive is not strong enough to split, the other can still be split with no serious drifting resulting. The extra hives can later be removed from the yard and the remaining hives lifted onto the pallet. It doesn't matter on what kind of day these splits are made, as even if the bees are flying, they will divide fairly evenly between the two splits . The queenless half should be given a queen, although, given 21 days, they will have their own - usually a good one if populations and stores are good and the weather is co-operative. There are several methods of introducing a queen. The most obvious is to simply look for the old queen, then insert a new mated queen or cell into the queenless half which is right next to it. This is slow, frustrating work, unsuited to the scheduling of a commercial operation. Another method is to wait until the fourth day and then look for eggs and add a queen to each queenless half. This does leave one split queenless for about a week, including introduction time. This brings up the merits of mated queens versus queen cells, which is another whole topic. The main advantage of side by side splits is that if one is inserting mated queens, the work of identifying the queenless half is simplified greatly. The other is that this can be done on hot days when bees could not be transported without a mess. Extra hives can be moved out when convenient - possibly by another crew and truck when yards are available for them. Splitting can then proceed more quickly. The disadvantage is messy looking yards (temporarily). Two queening can also be accomplished by stacking the splits back up when the new queen is laying, or some people use a special manifold box to combine the hives under a single stack of supers. * * * * * * * * * * * Takeaway splits are splits made where one of the two boxes of an over wintered hive is removed and taken to another yard and established as a colony there, whether to fill empty spaces in another established yard, or to start a new yard. If done when you are sure the bees have not been flying for several days (rainy or cool weather), they can even be left in the same yard without problems. Bees forget and re-orient after as little as one day without flight during off-flow periods. Be careful with this though, if there are any significant flows on, allow three days. During major flows, virtually every bee in the hive flies and will return to the original stand - this must be true or the abandonment method of honey pulling simply couldn't work - and we know it does. The only real problem with the takeaway method is that the second half of the hive is not readily available for comparison in queen searches when mated queens are to be used , and requeening is much slower. However, it is much neater as far as yard layout is concerned, is superior in the case where ripe queen cells are plentiful - plentiful enough to stick one into each half without searching for queens. All the lifting and moving are completed in one operation, but it may also be slower, because transport to new yards takes time. The additional (bottom) brood chamber may be given to the takeaway half after transport to the new yard - especially if manual loading is used. If early morning or a rainy day is chosen for the task, or if all hives in the yard to be split are smoked lightly at the entrance and repeatedly smoked so that foraging stops, all the bees will all be home and splits will be fairly even. However, if a flow is on and it's warm, and it's later in the day, it will be hard to keep the bees on the truck until you leave the yard, unless you are quick, have a good smoker, and have a helper or two. This type of splitting is best done when it is cooler, but not cold. Early morning is good. Showery weather is fine too. The bees are often lazy, if not always exactly friendly, when the humidity is high. This method is good where there are enough ripe cells available to stick one cell into each of half of all spits without bothering to look for queens. One cell is likely wasted, but it usually takes much more time to find queens than to raise cells. Moreover requeening can take place at the time of splitting if cell protectors are used. The advantages of takeway spits are that the yard layout is not disrupted and new yards can be started with the splits. The disadvantages are that both halves are not available for reference to speed queen locating, and that transporting hives distracts from this method of splitting which must be accomplished within the first two weeks of May for best results. Side by side and takeway splits are 'quick and dirty', usually work well, and avoid having to work through brood chambers frame by frame. They allow a lot of splitting in a short time with unskilled and/or clumsy help. They do not allow the same flexibility in adjusting feed and brood as progressive splits. Disease checks are usually omitted. Progressive (Top) Splits are a different approach altogether to splitting. Using this method, splitting progresses all spring, and even into the summer. There is no rush to complete splitting in Early May, or even before supers go on. Hives are worked through frame by frame. Requeening, disease checks, changing frames and other adjustments may suggest themselves to the beekeeper as he works. Superior stock can be spotted for potential breeding selection. Earlier splits will be producers, later splits will allow for increase. All splits must be fed liberally until they weigh 50kg and are into thirds. Initially, hives are reversed as soon as they are strong enough - bees covering some bottom bars - and the weather is settled enough - Late April or May in our area. Reversing is not essential, but ensures that there is brood in both boxes later. The procedure is to work through the yards, reversing, scraping, feeding, medicating, and to remove brood and feed from hives. Shake just enough bees from each frame to ensure the queen is not it. Don't shake so hard you displace the worker larvae from the bottom of the cells, and don't shake any with a queen cell if you plan to get a queen out of. A maximum of two or three frames of brood - in various stages of development - is taken on each trip, and only from hives that can spare it. Care must be taken to ensure that too much brood is not robbed from any one hive. Indeed, some promising hives are given brood. However, shake out any really slow hives onto the ground, no matter how pretty the queen may be and use the frames and boxes for making more nucs. Be careful during this not to damage brood. Brood is extremely valuable and vulnerable. It chills, overheats, or dries out very quickly if left out of the hive in the wind, rain or sun - especially open brood. Keep it in a box with a frame of feed fresh from the hive on each side to keep it warm and sheltered. Doing this work is like open heart surgery. It can do a world of good, but the metabolism of the hive is disturbed violently during the work and for some time after. Temperature regulation is temporarily lost and brood rearing is set back a day or two. Remember you are working to help the bees - so do things their way. Put brood close to other brood in the splits to share warmth, put the feed on the outside and don't put a warped frame next to a frame of brood, blocking its emergence. Preferably take several adjacent frames at a time from a hive and keep them in their relative positions in the new split. While there are few bees on the frames is an excellent time to scrape off burr and brace comb. One thing to keep in mind, however is that some ladder comb may serve you well. If your boxes are not perfect in their dimensions, there may be such a gap between the bottoms of the frames in the top box and the top bars in the bottom box that a queen cannot get over easily. Therefore you may inhibit the queen's travel through the hive by being too tidy. If the work is going slowly and a flow comes on, the job must be suspended and a special quick round of all yards is necessary to give thirds to strong hives - with or without an excluder - to hold them until their turn comes. If an excluder is not used, then the third may be used to make up a split later when convenient, and the hive again returned to a two storeys. As the beekeeper progresses through each yard, surplus brood and feed are accumulated into brood chamber boxes, each with a frame feeder, and placed above excluders on the strongest hives. The brood is arranged in an approximation to normal hive cluster shape, and feed is placed to the sides. All the feed frames in the top splits are from the parent overwintered hives, not from storage or dead hives, as it has been conditioned by the bees and the bees will more readily occupy it. Any old feed frames from storage or dead hives, are used in the parent colonies below which are strong enough to accept them. A full range of brood ages should be included, including one frame with eggs and open brood, if at all possible. This will serve to attract and hold bees when the split is eventually removed. The brood and feed is then replaced with empty frames, frames of feed, or foundation as appropriate in each parent hive. This is an opportunity to do some constructive beekeeping and brood chamber maintenance. Some hives may be honeybound, and others may be starving in early May. Medication with tetracycline is important when inserting new frames. Any foulbrood found may be removed, if serious - especially widespread scale on a comb. These combs should either be flattened in the diseased area with a hive tool and placed in the centre of a strong hive and medicated, or preferably discarded - particularly if you are not religious in your medication rounds. Slight fresh outbreaks may be medicated and marked for observation. Usually they clean up and disappear if adequate medication is used. Diseased combs may be accumulated into special quarantine splits and taken to a nurse yard. With adequate populations and medication they will clear up and stay healthy with only normal preventative medication once clean for a season. We have one inch auger holes on the front of all brood chamber boxes and find that it is extremely helpful in that the bees orient well to the hives in spite of different colours, and we don't have to cut the grass as early in the season. Hives stay more even in population as well, because a few strong hives with lots of entrance activity don't attract bees from weak colonies as much. It also is very good for encouraging the bees to occupy and recognize the split above the excluder. Each split may consist of anywhere from one to eight frames of brood. Four is best for most purposes. One frame is not recommended. Two, or preferably three will ensure that your efforts are not wasted. Small splits are easily damaged by frosts, robbing, and are generally unviable. Larger splits will usually produce considerable honey, especially if made early and boosted with a second box of brood and bees when the queen is established. After a yard is finished, there will be some hives with splits on top as thirds. We feed all hives syrup, filling all the frame feeders, unless we plan to move the splits immediately, in which case we leave the top one mostly empty to avoid spillage. We normally leave the splits on hives for several days, until a batch of cells is ready - but they can be removed immediately to have queens or cells inserted, if available. If you wish to take the spits away on the same visit as they are made up, then leave the lids off the splits as you go. This will encourage the bees to come up. Careful repeated smoking at the entrance will also help move bees up into the splits. The best way, however is to average three days or so before removing them, They have the assistance of the full hive population in getting re-organized. These splits can be used as new colonies by removing them to new yards and placing them on a floor with an entrance reducer or they may be used as seconds on previous splits - resulting in producing colonies. This gives a lot of flexibility if you are raising your own cells. First, the splits can be left on the parent hives for as much as a week - if you had eggs in the splits. After that all the brood will be sealed, and the splits may not hold their bees well when moved away. Second, during this time they can be used either as splits or as boosters. This allows one to time the arrival of a batch of cells or queens without leaving a split queenless for long, and provides an alternate use if cells or queens are unavailable. The advantages of progressive splits are that they allow ongoing swarm control all spring, place less stress on the colonies, allow for general improvement and equalizing of the colonies, spread the work out over a longer span and allow splits and cells to be available at the same time. Indeed, this method is not dependant on expensive imported queens, and can accomplish equal expansion using only locally produced cells. Swarm or supercedure cells can be utilised for those who do not raise their own cells or have a nearby source. We normally do not try to requeen any splits that do not take a queen on the first try. We use it as a booster under a good single box split next to it in the yard. After the first failure at requeening, the bees are older, and the split weaker. Why waste a queen or a cell on it? It's better to go out and make more splits with your resources. 'Don't put a first class resource into a second class result' - Peter Drucker - It is easy to spend 80% of your time on the 20% of your hives which never will do well. I try always to spend my time on the good hives that show promise and shake out or combine the losers as soon as they show their colours, so I can get on with the important stuff.. If your split had eggs, even if the queen or cell you put in does not work, you may well find you have a nice looking laying queen in three weeks - courtesy the bees themselves. Sometimes we don't get back to check. Usually things work out. If this splitting goes on into June or even July, then you will have supers on. This is not a big problem if you have excluders above the second. Just strip the supers off the first hive in the yard. Work on the hive, then place an excluder on and take the supers from the next hive and place them on top - and so on. The bees will merge into the new hive, or go home. No problem - after all, we're equalizing. If you don't use excluders, then unless you know where the queen is the supers should go onto their own hive. Of course, after July 15th, losing or killing queens is not a concern, as the bees will raise a very nice one themselves and you will have requeened cheaply. Bees from eggs laid after mid-July usually do not contribute to a crop. W. Allen Dick, Beekeeper VE6CFK Rural Route One Swalwell Alberta Canada T0M 1Y0 Email: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] Virtual Art Gallery: http://www.cuug.ab.ca:8001/~dicka __________________Why not drop by?____________________