Creating Two Nucs by Splitting a Hive 2017
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- čas přidán 4. 05. 2017
- During a recent inspection I could decide whether to split a colony or not as the weather was quite chilly. The sun came out and so I decided that I would split the colony and at the same time retain the original queen and thereby create an additional two colonies for my national apiary.
This is one of the simplest forms of queen rearing as it requires no manipulations prior to the queen cells being produced you simply take advantage of the queen cells produced by the colonies "Swarm Impulse" and make the split before the colony manages to swarm.
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You're a great teacher mate, many thanks from South Australia 👍
Thanks sir 🙏🙏 your video help me a lot because I'm just started to be a new beekeeper...
👍Really useful video
Thanks for another great video on making splits. Watching you go through each frame really helps us gain the confidence to do this ourselves. Keep them coming! There is always something different in each hive to learn from.
Hi Karen,
Thanks for commenting, I am really pleased that they are of use and you are gaining confidence by watching them.
You are so right about learning from each hive, every time I open up a colony I learn something new about the bees.
Stewart
I found this very clear and educative. I will try this coming spring.
Yes, it was a pleasure to hear the piping sound of the queen bee.
I love what you have given me. As a new beekeeper in this part of Tanzania I have been struggling with the problem of my hives not being colonised for TOO long. Once again, thank you.
Just started keeping bees and these vids are great...learning a lot..Thanks
Great video! The weather where I am has been really miserable. I enjoy and appreciate how much information you put into your videos. Thank you!
Thanks Jeffrey,
The weather here has been cold and dry so not great. I'm "reliably" informed it will warm up this weekend!
Stewart
That was one of the best bee videos I've seen. Fascinating!
Very useful and a good teacher, thank you.
Hi Colin,
Thanks for your comments.
Stewart
Thanks so much for the very helpful information.
Hi Jane,
Nice to hear from you again. Glad you're still enjoying the videos.
Stewart
Such a good learning resource Stuart, many thanks, 2nd year of beekeeping for me. I went originally from a 6 frame Nuc colony up to a double brood box and 2 supers hive at the end of the first season. I was at 3 hives going into this winter 2020, one died out due to isolation starvation. As it happens I feel so guilty because I was feeding fondant and kept checking but it wasn't obvious to me that they couldn't get to the fondant. Hopefully I'll learn from this. Regards -Jim
Super great teacher learning a lot from you
Thank you for your videos! You are a Rock Star of beekeeping! My beekeeping skills get better with each video you post. Thank you for helping me be successful in this difficult hobby.
Hi Barbara,
That's lovely of you to say. Have a great Summer of beekeeping.
Stewart
Brilliant video, great work
Your Honeybee vids are among the best on the web! I just completed what we call a walkaway split here in the states. Keep up the good work and greetings from Washington state.
Hi George,
Thanks for the nice comments about the videos. How is your season going in Washington state?
Stewart
We're having a rather late spring with a lot of rainy weather. There has been enough good weather days that I have not had to feed my bees so far. I have 5 colonies including the split mentioned above. I found and marked the new queen just today.
Stewart, these videos are so interesting, I live in Trinidad which is a country in the south Caribbean and I have africanized bees. I'd never dream of having more than a single brood box because of how defensive the bees can be. I watched this video in awe of how nice and well behaved a hive of this size could be. Seeing all your videos is really making me think about making videos of my experiences with africanized bees and showing people they aren't as bad as people make them out to be.
Hi,
Thanks for commenting. Yes you should make some videos of your beekeeping experiences, they would be really good for everyone to see how you handle your africanised bees.
Stewart
An excellent video. Very well explained. We are thinking about doing the same to one of our hives, so we now will do it.
Hi Pete,
Thanks for commenting. It's a simple process to be honest and one that can be used on any colony to increase.
Good luck with it and let me know how you get on.
Stewart
Hoping to give this method a try in the next few weeks if I find my bees are preparing to swarm
Hi Stuart,
Good luck with it, let me know how you get on.
Stewart
Quick tip, if you wear a baseball cap backwards it helps keep your veil from falling forward.
Hi Adrian,
I am definitely going to try that! I bet I'll look really daft though and I will blame you on camera, lol !
Stewart
Thank you Stu
Amazing at 7.26 mins the Queen makes an incredible sound whilst vibrating her wings, I know the BBC 20/06/2020 has just reported scientists recording Queen bee's singing but you are the first possibly to film this in real time.
Thank you. This made sense and I shall be trying this.
A great resource, thanks for the great videos. Apart from the frames with a QC on from the parent colony, what other frames did you put in the 2 x Nuc's from the parent? Or was it just spare drawn frames/foundation?
Love your videos. Very educational. I’m new to beekeeping. How do you tell if the colony is strong in numbers so you can get two nucs out of them? There must be a way of telling there are enough bees in the colony to support such split. Thanks.
good job stewart: you missed a queen cell at the top of the second frame that wasn't a drone, but you certainly caught the rest. I love bees, your's look great, and better than the rainy ones in Ireland. poor people.
Hi P.A.,
I'm lucky I have an eagle-eyed helper who assists with the videos and also spots things I miss. From memory, this was one that was spotted and removed although I'm sure I miss plenty more through the season. It's a consequence of trying to do more than two things at once!!
Stewart
Very much enjoyed your video on splitting and keen to try your tip of keeping the Nucs on the original site to redistribute the flyers. When then are you able to separate the nucs and does one have to be placed >3 miles away? Thank you for your videos!
Hi Stewart,
In the Nuc boxes you put one frame = QC brood and stores. Were the other 5 frames made up of new foundation or were they drawn frames with stores in them. Thanks
Hi Neeta,
Sorry, I missed that bit out in this video. I make them up with capped brood and stores. The old queen gets the foundation unless you have already drawn comb which would be far better as she can just carry on laying eggs undisrupted.
Stewart
What do you do about the drones that hatch out above the QEx in the reassembled original hive? Let them out when you next inspect?
Hi & thanks for your learning videos
but one question, do we fill the nucs with 6 of the parenthive combs? and pull 6 empty in the parent hive
Hi Amirhossein Atabak,
Thanks for commenting.
If I am splitting the hive into two nucs I would only take three frames for each nuc giving a total of six. This is always subject to there being enough bees in the parent hive and the time of year but you want to leave enough in the parent hive for them to build up again into a nice strong colony.
Stewart
+The Norfolk Honey Company (The Norfolk Honey Co) thank you so much 👍, God bless you .
Hi Stewart. How would you do this if you couldn’t find the queen please?
Stewart great videos and consistent in the presentation and content. Excellent! Just wanted to ask can you do the same thing but using frames with eggs on rather than Queen cells. Will the bees in the nucs make queens then?
Hi Ian,
many thanks for your kind comments. The answer to your question is yes you can just split the colony without queen cells but that puts a lot of pressure on the workers to produce enough royal jelly to feed to the queen cells and may result in inferior queens due to being underfed pre-capping the cell. I would rather have a strong colony produce large healthy queen cells fully loaded with royal jelly and split from that but it is possible and lots of beekeepers do just that and call it a walkaway split.
Stewart
Thank you. Probably better to do an artificial swarm as per your other video then in that instance?
Yes, I would go with an artificial swarm if you only want to increase by one colony.
Stewart
Thank you, that was a great explanation but I'm wondering what did you do with the original queen and the rest of the colony ? how far away is it ? and did you put them in a nuclear too ?
Hi Penny,
We leave the original colony in the apiary around 5 metres away. The flying bees go back to the nucs and populate those and the original queen doesn't immediately swarm because she has no flying bees to swarm with.
Stewart
Why do you create two Nucs when splitting? Is this an insurance policy in case one doesn’t work and you would then unite them to make a stronger colony? Thank you for the videos, excellent . Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for your comments.
There are several reasons why you would split a colony into two or more nucs. Increasing the number of colonies you have is one, producing multiple queens to replace ageing queens perhaps, as you suggest, an insurance policy in case one doesn't survive. I'm sure there are other reasons that beekeepers will have for producing more than one queen. If the opportunity arises with multiple queen cells I like to take advantage of them.
Stewart
Very true Stewart and then there’s the natural way of the honeybee to swarm when the colony gets so big. Healthy colonies multiply themselves so when you have healthy bees like Stewart has they’ll want to and need to split off. By making splits, you relieve the congestion in the hive and basically do the swarming for them. And, you get to keep the bees!!! Here in the states, nucs are selling for $135-$200. So every time a swarm ends up in a tree and you can’t recover them, you’ve essentially lost that value in bees. Bummer!
Nice inspection
Noticed you forgot to put the queen excluder on the queen right hive once you have removed the queen cells from the shallow before you put on the drawn super- something we all do when distracted.
Don't know how you manage to keep concentrating whilst doing all this video work- well done
Hope you don't mind us pointing out your rare errors from us armchair beekeepers.
Hello,
I can't remember whether that was a deliberate action to allow the queen to go up into the super as it already had brood in it or not, most likely not, I'm surprised I don't forget more while I'm filming.
Nobody likes to have their errors pointed out to them but with beekeeping I don't really mind, I've never said that I know it all and never make mistakes, maybe it even gives the beginners watching hope that they too can make a few mistakes and still get away with it.
Judging from your comments you are more than just an armchair beekeeper, let me know some more about your beekeeping, it's always nice to know who I'm chatting with, maybe join our facebook group and help out the beginners there too.
We need to be passing on as much beekeepingknowledge and information as possible to help beginners start well and keep beekeeping, not give up after a poor first year.
Stewart
Hi Stewart,
I've recently tried this method with my bees here in Melbourne, Australia. However, in my case, there were no swarm cells. The colonies were very strong in the middle of our Spring. A split was taken because I wanted to create more colonies. The main hives were moved several metres away and the nuc with a couple of frames at the original location so the flying bees would go into the nuc. A couple of new queens were purchased and placed into the nucs at the time of the split.
One of these nuc splits has forged ahead. The other appears to have not liked the queen and created supersedure cells.
My question is; should I have introduced the new queen the following day instead of straight after the split?
Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks for your great videos.
In my experience waiting didn't make much difference. Sometimes the colony just tolerates a purchased queen until they can produce one if they don't like her for some unknown to us reason. Even introducing a mated queen there is no guarantee the colony will not replace her. Just my experience.
@@jasongentry7405 Thanks Jason, always interesting to hear other people's thoughts.
Cheers Ken 🐝
Hi Stewart, How long will you leave the two Nucs before you inspect for new laying queens?
Hi Giles,
Thanks for the question. I will probably leave them another couple of weeks before I take a look, so that's nearly four weeks in total.
Stewart
Thanks Stewart.
Hello Stewart, this is my first ever question. Do you have to use nucs or is that because you are going to transport them? Could you not just use a hive? Thankyou.
Hi David,
Thanks for the question. Because the split uses only a small number of frames it helps the bees to be in a nuc box where they can manage the space more easily. You could use a hive and create just one spit or use another method called an artificial swarm to carry out the increase/split.
Stewart
You hat luck that the wether was cold closed queen cells and I herd the queen singing normaly that meens there is already a Queen hached and running around but I do love this song
A nice vidio well made that every one can understand I have subed thank you for the nice convasion from the vid that I comented on and have recamended your chanel to a jung ladey that wishes to keep bees
Thanks Richard,
The funny thing is when I'm recording the videos I'm concentrating so much on what to say and what to focus on and what to do with the camera that I don't really get much time to stop and look at the bees!
I really enjoy all the comments and feedback that everyone gives me. Thanks for subscribing and recommending the channel.
Stewart
Hi Stewart. Is there a minimum distance that the parent colony has to be moved away from the new nucs ?
Really informative videos. Thanks very much for all your good work.
Hi C.A.,
I would go for around 6m as a minimum as the flying bees will drift back to the original hive if they pick up the pheromone.
Stewart
@@TheNorfolkHoneyCo Thanks
Another excellent video thank you. I was interested that the bees had not swarmed as there were several sealed queen cells. Was this just good fortune?
Hii RIchard,
Thanks for your comment and question.
It's all about timing, experience, knowledge and a huge amount of good fortune!
I like to use this split method a lot for increasing the number of colonies I have and if you can get the timing right you can make it work really well. If you get the timing wrong, they swarm!
Stewart
Thanks Stewart. That’s a good answer. I guess if one is disciplined and able to do 7 day inspections then there should never be a sealed queen cell and the risk of swarming is low. I don’t have a large area for my hobby apiary and wondered about doing splits using demaree. Do you have any videos about that method?
I find even with seven day inspections the bees still work to their own agenda!
I have used the Demaree method before but not on video, I'll add it to the list for next season.
Stewart
Stewart, would you please explain the differences in your British standard National hives from the commercial types. Those of us over in the American colonies have our common Langstroth variety and I don't know who established the dimensions or why they were chosen.....which causes me to wonder how the British dimensions were arrived at. All quite interesting.
Did you notice what the queen was doing when it paused. It made a noise 4 times. Do you know what she was trying to communicate to the rest of the hive?
Hi Carl,
To be honest I missed that, well done for spotting it. I have no idea what the message was but it's really interesting isn't it.
Thanks for mentioning it.
Stewart
When do bees swarm in England?
During a recent inspection a fair few drones were found to be mutant and had the creamy white eyes of blind bees. Is there anything that can be done to avoid this happening and is it due to inbreeding or disease?
Hi Jean,
It's a genetic mutation and to be honest, I'd have to read up about it to confirm, but I think it's tied in with diploid drones.
Stewart
Hi Stewart, What is the lowest temperature that you can safely attempt a split?
Hi Dominy,
Personally I like it to be in the mid-teens to give them the very best opportunity, you can split at lower temperatures but they just don't get going as fast as more bees have to stay in the nuc or hive to maintain the brood nest temperatures. This week is looking warmer towards the middle of the week so 14+ degrees is good. The other worry, and possibly more importantly, is overnight temperatures dropping really low so watch out for those as well.
Stewart
great, thanks! I just wish it would warm up. I'm worried the hives are ready to swarm and I'll lose the bees if I don't perform the split. Its a bit of a rock and a hard place situation!
If they are close to swarming just go ahead and do it anyway.
Better that than leaving them an extra couple of days and having them swarm.
Stewart
I was starting to think that! Thanks for the advice!
Must be 14c cause they don’t fly at 14 f
looks like you missed a cup on the 4th frame in 12:22
Hi Outdoor Buzz,
Yes, good spot, they were what I term rudimentary queen cells which didn't have any eggs or larvae in them. I don't normally bother removing them but wanted to show that they can be removed. There was another one on the other side of the same frame I think.
Stewart
What season are you in this video Stewart?
Hi 66otnt,
It was late April, so early season. This year we were still struggling with cold weather at that time so a lot depends on your local conditions. The essentials are lots of bees and a nectar flow then the bees really take to the split well.
Stewart
The Norfolk Honey Company Thankyou Stewart. This strategy could be a game changer for me. Here in Australia, the weather during winter can be very mild, today for instance, the middle of our winter it was 20C most of the day, and overnight it will get down to 0C, tomorrow through the day, the forecast is for 16C daytime temperature.
I get it that you emphasise a honey flow with a large and active colony! Once again an exceptional video, and very helpful.
hello stuart i am a subscriber to your channel. i need to clean up.some bee cages and queen rearing plastic cassettes etc - i have been advised to use washing soda? any tips how to use it safely? too hot and it will warp the kit, cold make not work? thanks neil
Hi Neil,
I would go with hand hot water. I use the Nicot system and was it in hot water straight from the tap and it seems to hold up without any problems.
Stewart