FINAL EPISODE (10) - How Many Splits From A Single Colony

This is the last episode in the how many splits can I make in a season, and the reason for it is that I just cannot cope. I have got way too much stuff going on in the summer, and I've realized that making these splits incrementally, i.e., doing them 10, 20, 40, 80, puts way too much stress on me as a beekeeper and way too much stress on my family. So I'm going to hold my hands up and just say it's too much work to do it at this point in the year. What I normally do with my bees is I make my splits late on in the year. So I kind of take a cut around last week of July, first week of August, and I make up, say, 200 nucs. Do it all in one hit, and then I just go around and I feed them. I find that's a really successful way to get the nucs ready for winter, and it means that you can balance them very well, and it's a very efficient use of my time. I thought I would do this video breaking it up, one colony, splitting it into 10 nucs, taking that into 20 nucs, moving things around and trying to split things up evenly. And it just turns out that it's actually very, very difficult. The main difficulties that I've got are balancing the splits. So at the moment we're up to 20 nucs from that single colony. Some of them are on like 2 or 3 frames of bees. Some of them need knocking back because they're filling the box. Very difficult to get that balance right. It's for that reason that I'm calling it quits on this series. I'm not going to go as far as I possibly can, and I do apologize because I would have loved to kind of get up to 40, to get up to 80, and see how many I could do. But So it's the first week of June at the moment, and I've got 20 nucs that are pretty much full. I'll show you all of those in the video today. I'm gonna bring them back to where the other set of 10 are, and I'll show you all 20 nucs all together in a single place. And just bear in mind, it's the first week of June.

Right, so all the colonies in the background there, I've got the original 10 nucs where I made a further 10 splits. I'm not gonna go into them here 'cause I don't want them to fly, and I'm actually moving them in the middle of the day, so I'm gonna lose a few flyers as well.

I'm gonna close them up now though. Get them off into the new apiary, and then I'll give you a snapshot of the 20 nucs that I created from one colony before I close this series down for good.

Right, so we're up to the forest apiary.

I've brought all of the nucs that I've made up here, and every single nuc that I'm gonna show you today is made from that single split, that single colony that we took early on in the year. We have got 20 nucs from a single colony. They're really big and strong as well. Most of them are covering 6 frames now. A few of them are over maybe like 3 or 4 frames. They still need to grow a little bit. But you've got to remember, it is the middle of June, 16th of June today. We could easily split every single colony that's here today and still be in an okay position for wasps. That would get us up to 40, and then without a shadow of a doubt, you'd easily be able to take those 40 through the winter, and they'd actually probably need further splitting. So I know it's a complete cop-out, you just have to take my word for it. I reckon 80 was realistic, but in terms of my workload throughout the season, it's not a good way for me and make my splits. Far, far more work than actually going in at the end of the season and just taking down colonies, taking colonies apart, making up your number around first week of August, building them up, taking them through the winter. That system for me works loads, loads better. I kind of wanted to do this video just to prove how many splits you could make from a single colony in a year. Didn't really factor in how difficult that was actually going to be and the pressure that it was going to put on me in terms of kind of going back and checking those colonies and making sure they don't swarm and making the splits. Huge amount of work, really, really a lot of work on top of an already very busy year. One colony to 20 splits in a season is still quite impressive, and I think to get to that position in the middle of June is really good, and it just shows you what can be done. Right, enough of me blabbing on. Let's get my veil up. Let's go and take a look at those 20 colonies and have a last look at the number of nucs I've made from a single colony. There's 21 nucs in total here because I had to split out one of them and turn it into 2, and I'll just show you The entrances of all of them. So every single one, even at 7 PM in the evening, still got some activity. Not a huge amount. I will take the lids off in a little bit and show you inside, just show you how busy some of these bees are.

Cool.

It's been very, very good this year though for making splits. It really has been excellent weather, makes it so much easier that you don't need to constantly feed. But I have to say, the last couple of weeks has been very challenging because the bees have just had nothing to be getting on with. The flow died and the bees really did suffer, and they went backwards a little bit. Got a good amount of feed in them now. I've been going in, topping them up over the last week or so, and that really has made all the difference to their development. So you can see there, nice amount of activity at the entrance, bees just coming out to say hello. Temperament of the bees is improving with each generation split that I make, getting rid of those nasty colonies that we started off with. I'll open up some colonies now and I'll show you just how good they're looking inside.

So let's have a look inside some of these nucs then. I'll go through every single one. First one there, that's a 6-framer, completely full. Next one along, 6-framer, completely full. And again, 6-framer, completely full. Very happy with those 3. They were part of the original 10 splits that we made. And they are ready for either further splitting or ready to upgrade to go into a hive now. Next batch along, that is a real safe 4-frame split you've got there. 2 frames of foundation they've not touched. Next one along, that's about a 3.5, 4-frame split. And then the final one, you've got an easy 6-frame split in this colony here. These ones up at the back, easily covering 6 frames, all of them. They need upgrading. They are running out of space now. Little bit more variation up here. I'd say that's probably a 3-frame split. 3-frame split. That one is heavily congested, 6 frames all day long. And then the next one, again, maybe a 3 or 4-frame split. So this one here, covering most of the frames, probably a 4 or 5-frame split. Back onto the big 6-framers here, and again, another one that's completely full with 6 frames. And then the final set of 6, 6-frame full, definitely. These are full as well. These are definitely full. Kind of get the idea, don't you?

These are ready to go.

And all of these, barring a couple, are definitely primed and ready to be split again, or they need to be upgraded to go into some hives. So there we go, that's it for the video, that's it for the series. 21 splits from a single colony in about 7 weeks. We would have easily got to 80, but I completely wussed out and couldn't manage it with my current workload. Maybe I'll do it again sometime, see if we can get up to 80 colonies in a single season. But for the time being, my record is 21 splits from a single colony.