Italian Colonies left to divide
Dividing or splitting a healthy colony is good bee management.
The advantages are numerous: It increases your number of hives, it decreases the size of the parent colony, discouraging swarming, it helps to control Varroa mites (break in brood cycle), and it produces an income from selling your nucs!
On May 17, 2015, I divided 2 of my strongest Italians colonies with each have a MN hygienic queen. They are winter survivors, and looked populous and very healthy early this spring.
I used the method I was taught at the University of Minnesota: about 4 days before getting my new queens from Nature's Nectar in Stillwater, I divided hive 1 and 2.
From Hive 1, first on the left:
I took one box from hive 1, with frames of different stages of brood (eggs, larvae and pupae). I made sure I did not have the queen on any of the 10 frames.
Then I put it on top of colony 1, separated with a queen excluder.
From hive 2, second from left, I split it in half, 2 boxes each. I put a queen excluder in between the 2 sets of 2 boxes.
May 21, 2015
I looked in the first box of the first colony. I did not see any eggs, so I could deduct that the queen was below the queen excluder! I took that box, and placed it at location 3 on the picture.
I did the same with the other colony. I saw eggs in the top 2 boxes, so I knew the queen was there. I then took both bottom boxes with no eggs and transferred them to location 4, on the picture.
I also added a pail of 1:1 syrup and half a pollen patty, to each divide. The probability of queen acceptance is greater if the divide is fed sugar syrup, and kept queenless for 24 hours.
I added 2 honey supers to each "parent" colonies.
Then I drove to Stillwater and got a couple of queens. Jim Kloek , owner of Nature's Nectar told me that many beekeepers this year are dividing...this is a good sign May 22, 2015My husband and I installed our 2 queens, and left the bee yard happy! I will not disturb them for 5-7, 10 days, so the queen can get aquatic with her new family.
This weekend, I will inspect both the parents and the divided. I will look for eggs/ and or growing larvae, this indicate that the colony is queen right.
I will be adding a deep box with frames, on each divide.
Happy Beekeeping!
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| The divides: Hive 3, and 4 |
What were some of the reasons that you decided to purchase queens rather than let the splits raise their own queens? Thanks for the great post.
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