How To Balance Hives - Sharing Beehive Resources For Strong Colonies

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No-Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to show you how I swap brood between colonies to balance my hives. So this is a really important part of beekeeping and one which I don't think you can really get away from if you've got more than kind of 2 or 3 colonies. What we're looking to do here is support the smaller colonies and stop the bigger colonies from swarming. So this is kind of like an early, a late spring, early summer technique, but I do it all the way throughout the year to get that support to the younger colonies. There's a few considerations that you need to make when you're doing that, and I'll run through those in this video. But like I say, what you're trying to do here is you're trying to give support to the smaller colonies by giving them additional frames of brood, and you're trying to stop big colonies from swarming by increasing the amount of laying space that they've got, so by giving them foundation, getting them to draw out that foundation. So it's not as clear-cut as that. A colony still might swarm, and it's not as clear-cut as that, as in a colony might need more than a frame of brood in order to get that boost. But it's a good method for evening out the amount of brood within your colonies. So a few words of caution first is you can't just go to a 1 or 2 frame nuc and stick in 3 frames of brood and expect that to become a 5 frame nuc or a 6 frame nuc. It doesn't work like that. You need to measure the strength of a colony by the frames of bees Not by the frames of brood that you add into it. So if you're opening up a colony, for example, and there's say 2 frames of bees, 1 frame of brood, you can never add more than 1 frame of brood to that because you need to make sure that there's always sufficient number of bees to cover the emerging brood that you're putting in. The other thing to say is that the frames that you should be transferring over should be as close to emerging as it possibly can be. What you don't want to do is add a frame of eggs to a 1 or 2 frame nuc, because then the bees aren't going to have the capacity to go out and forage the nectar and the pollen and stuff to feed those eggs to get them up to a suitable point. Otherwise, the queen would have just laid those eggs. So you're trying to get them to kind of work too fast for their own good. So you just need to kind of take all of that into, into your consideration. And then you can really, really start to balance out these hives, and it works well. So for today's video, I'm going to show you a few examples of that. I'm going to focus on the nucs that I'm doing at the moment. So where I've got lots of nucs in this apiary, I've got some that are at 6 frames of bees, maybe 4 or 5 frames of brood, and the flows are starting. So I need to take action on those hives or they're going to swarm. So what's going to happen is that the honey will come into the nuc, the honey will restrict the queen's laying ability because they're going to fill all of those cells with honey. They're going to sense that there's not enough space and they're going to swarm. So for that colony, I need to take action, and that action will be I want to reduce the amount— sorry, I want to increase the amount of laying space. So I can either take out a frame of stores if they've got enough stores, or I can take out a frame of brood if they've got enough brood, or I can take out a frame of each. So on a colony like that, I'd be looking to take out one frame of brood, one frame of stores and give them 2 frames of foundation, and that will buy me a few weeks, maybe a couple of weeks, where they'll draw out that foundation, the queen will lay it up, and that will suppress the urge for them to swarm. Then I can take that frame of stores and I can take that frame of brood and I can go and boost other colonies with it. So I'll take the frame of stores and I'll give it to colonies that are low on stores. I'll take the frame of brood and I'll give it to colonies that I want to boost up. But obviously taking into account the caveats that I've already mentioned, whereby you don't want to take a 1 or a 2 frame nuc and give them 3 frames of brood. So it's slightly strategic and you need to kind of work through the colonies one by one and analyse exactly what their requirements are, whether they need something being taken away or something being given to them. Now what you don't want to do is you don't want to boost a nuc at this time of year to the detriment of any of your production colonies. I don't know if you can see behind me or you can hear it at the moment, it's really nice weather today. We're kind of middle to end of June and it's beautiful weather, it's really nice temperature, there's strong flows on. So the last thing I want to go and do is steal that resource from a really, really strong production colony to boost a nuc that all I'm going to do is make it slightly stronger going into winter. I only want to use resources to boost nucs that are surplus to other colonies. So where I've got nucs on 6 frames, I want to take a frame out to suppress swarming. I've got that free brood as a resource to use. I don't want to go and take it from a really, really strong colony that's performing well, showing no signs of swarming whatsoever, and then I'm going to reduce the foraging capacity of that production hive. So it's a proper game of chess and you just need to go through one by one. But like I say, take into account the following considerations: don't weaken any of your production colonies, don't try and over-strengthen small, small colonies, and only give what each colony can afford, or only give what each colony can afford to take. So let's get our suit on and I'll show you what I mean. So before you start going pinching brood from colonies and putting them in other colonies, you need to think, why am I doing this? Now, if your aim is to take a nuc and build it up into a production colony, then the last thing you want to do is to go and pinch brood from it. It really sets the colony back. Now, for me, this nuc here is on about 6 frames of bees and probably 4 frames of brood, and it's destined to overwinter. That's all I want from this colony. I just want to get it through the summer. I want to get it to build up enough stores to see it through the winter. I'm going to treat it for varroa, and then I just want to get that colony through. So I'm quite happy to take as much brood as I need from this colony. I can keep on knocking it back, and as long as I get through to kind of like back end of July and I've got 3 or 4 frames of brood in it, the colony's fine and it's going to get through the winter. So I can safely take stuff out of this colony, and that's what you need to ask yourself. So don't start kind of robbing your best colonies to back up the smaller ones, because then all you end up doing is just getting more colonies through winter and losing honey. That's not what you want to do. The idea is to get as much honey as possible. But this colony here, safe to nick a frame of brood out of. There's plenty of stores in there, plenty of bees. It's mated. The queen's in good condition. She's laying. The weather's set fair, so I'm going to pinch a frame of brood from this colony, and I'll show you how I do it. So that's the colony we're going to pinch it from. Like I say, it's not a monster. It's got about 5 or 6 frames of bees. It's got a few out foraging now and a few tucked down below. It's a bit stronger than it looks from above, but it's got 4 frames of brood. That's more than this colony needs at this moment in time, so I'm going to pinch 1 frame of brood And I'm going to replace it with one frame of foundation. So in most instances, people say use drawn comb, and if you haven't got drawn comb, use foundation. Now, there's a couple of times where that doesn't apply, and one of them is when you're doing this. The other one is when you're using it for swarms. So a piece of foundation is actually better here than a piece of drawn comb. And it sounds counterintuitive, and obviously for the colony, they would prefer the drawn comb. But what you're trying to do with this colony is you're trying to slow them down a bit. This colony, left to its own devices, will swarm before the end of the year. Highly, highly likely to swarm, even though we're only about a week away from the solstice. They will swarm due to lack of space, because they're pretty much filling that cavity now, and they're only going to get bigger over the next kind of 6 to 8 weeks. So a piece of foundation here gives them something to do, gives them something to use the energy on that they're bringing in through nectar, as opposed to storing it. So it's actually beneficial to use a piece of foundation in this instance. So when you're going through the colony, what you want to take out is the absolute best frame of brood. So the biggest frame of brood with the most emerging brood, that's what you want. So that's the frame of brood that I'm going to take from this colony. It's got a nice mix of stores, pollen, and some brood as well. And what that does is it means I'm not going to overburden the small colony that I'm giving it to. If you were to give them a full plate of brood like that, you could risk getting chilled brood because there's not enough bees in order to cover the brood. So you're much safer choosing something with a smaller patch like that, some pollen, some honey, and then you're really giving the colony that you're donating that to a boost, as opposed to just saying, here's some brood, do the best with it that you possibly can. You're being efficient with what you're giving them. So like I say, choose A nice frame, you want as much capped brood as you possibly can get, get some pollen in there, get some stores in there, that's pretty much ideal to give a boost to a smaller nuc. So then you want to condense everything else in the nuc together, so get the remaining 5 frames as close as you can, take your frame of foundation and put it on the edge. You don't want to split any of the brood by putting the foundation in the middle, it's called checkerboarding. I don't like it. I think you should condense the brood nest to the middle, put the foundation on the outer frames. Not to say checkerboarding doesn't work, but on a smaller colony like this, you're safer not kind of putting any restrictions in between that brood. So that's this colony done now. Probably got an extra couple of weeks before this colony swarms now I've given it that frame of foundation. So we can close these guys up and we'll go and donate it to a smaller nuc. So this is the nuc I'm going to donate my frame of brood to, and like I said, you need to be really, really careful with the size of the nuc that you're giving this frame of brood to. Ideally, it should have a couple of frames of bees as a minimum. I don't like to do it if there's only one frame of bees, you need to leave them on the frame that they're on. With 2 frames of bees, you can slot the brood frame in between and they should cover it and keep it warm. But like I say, if you only have one frame of brood, definitely don't go any higher than one frame of brood because then you'll get chilled brood and it's counterintuitive to what you're trying to achieve. So this colony here, I've got 2 frames of bees, there's a mated queen in there. I always like to do it to a mated colony, otherwise they can start to pull eggs off this capped, off the frame of brood that you're giving them, so I always do it to a mated colony. If you've got any with virgins, you can just wait until they're mated and then you can safely add a frame and then they won't make any emergency cells. So I'll show you this colony and give you an idea of the size. So you can see it, small colony, do you know what I mean? If I had to say it, it'd be about a frame and a half of bees, but it's a mated queen, they've got stores, they've got capped brood already, so they really could do with a nice boost just to get them going. So what you want to do is you want to go through the colony and find the least developed frame. So if there's a frame of foundation in there, take that. If not, find the emptiest frame that you can find. This one's fully drawn, but it's got no stores, no pollen, no brood, so that's a really good contender to take that one out. Then in between the 2 frames of the bees, you want to split the brood. So, do you know what I mean? You can see on that they've got some brood, they've got some bees. This is a good colony to do it with. That second frame there, they've got some brood on it as well. Brood on that side. And then they've got a third frame in there that's just stores. So make sure there's no bees on the frame that you're donating. If there's any bees on it, they may kill the queen. This one's not got any bees on. And then you want to place it in between the 2 most populated frames of bees. And that's it, it's done. It's as simple as that. I've chosen to do it on a really nice warm day. Lots of bees are going to be out foraging, they're going to come back and they will cover those frames of brood. There is enough bees in there to cover those frames of brood and keep it warm, but also I'm doing it at a really good time of year where it is very warm at the moment. So you kind of limit the risk of any chilled brood by doing it in a warm period. So I'm going to continue across the apiary now doing this to all of my nucs, finding the biggest ones that are close to swarming, kind of covering 4, 5, and 6 frames. I'm going to take out a frame of brood or a frame of stores, and then I'm going to boost the other ones. So you can only boost these colonies by taking the frames of brood, but you can relieve the stress on the bigger colonies by taking the frames of stores. So you just need to judge each colony as you go through. And kind of balance them out as best as you possibly can. So we'll close this one up now, and then we'll give it a few weeks, and it'll be really, really firing on all cylinders. So that's it for today's video. Really important and useful technique: balancing brood within your nucs and within your hives. Like I said, follow the key tips: don't weaken your strong production colonies, don't give brood. To weak nucs. Make sure there's always enough bees to cover the brood and be smart with your resources. So I hope you've enjoyed the video. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.