Saturday, 9 May 2015

Two Becomes Four

This week I split my two honey bee colonies to make four. I moved the over-wintered queens to a new location and left behind frames of eggs, brood, pollen and honey for the bees at the home site to develop new queens. Each week I'll check the progress of the queenless hives and give each of them a frame of brood with eggs from the queenright hives to increase their chances of success. If all goes according to plan, a month from now there should be young queens, frisky fresh and ready to produce a new generation of honey-makers. 

Original hive location with now queenless boxes.


Overwintered queens now relocated to new boxes on a nearby stand.


Worker bees wondering where their queen went. Better make a new one, ladies!


The honey bee village has now doubled to four homes.


A good slather of grease on hive stand legs will deny ants their picnics of honey.
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4 comments:

  1. Nancy J9 May 2015 at 14:20

    This sounds very technical to me, so I will need to research some facts about Queens!! I didn't know they could be moved, greased legs for ant deterrent, and now your family homes have doubled, looking so good for honey production.

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  2. Jenn Jilks11 May 2015 at 21:35

    This is amazing! Good for you. How on earth did you learn all this?

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  3. Carol14 May 2015 at 13:09

    Looks like you are using supers for hive bodies? Great idea ..wish I had..frames all the same size. I am using double deeps for brood nest...not doing splits...only want two hives so am populating the trees around us with natural bees.

    Do you plan to split next year? You'll have a nice bee yard.

    Looks like you use the same grease I do.

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  4. Out To Pasture14 May 2015 at 19:20

    Yes Carol, I use only supers for hive bodies. They are easier for my scrawny, old arms to lift and just the one frame size simplifies interchanging. If my hives survive the winter (always a bit of a gamble in my area) I'll make at least one split in the Spring. I like to raise young queens each year from proven, winter hardy stock.

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