How To Do Walk Away Splits - Natural Queen Rearing And Surprising Success

Today I'm going back into my Hyde Hives queen rearing nuc where I did a walkaway split with 8 colonies of bees. I have no idea how well this is going to have worked. I've got 8 colonies, hopefully 8 virgins, maybe they've turned into mated queens. Will we find eggs? Will we find brood? Will we see the queens? I have no idea. This video could be the biggest flop or it could be the easiest 8-colony split I've ever made. I'll get my bee suit on, let's go and check out how the bees are getting on in the Hyde Hives queen rearing hive. Right, so I've got a new light up there Hopefully that means you can see my face a little bit better. Always love investing in kit to make this channel a little bit better, even if I have no idea how to use it. Let's get into the queen rearing nucs, see how well they're doing. Right, so all of the sections are looking very, very good still. None of them have absconded, got bees in all of the sections. I said previously, I'm kind of thinking if I get 50% of these mated, I'll be very, very happy. Not in the sense of I'm expecting to get 50 mated. I think I'm expecting maybe 2 or 3 to be mated out of this. This was a real bog-standard walkaway split. I turned 2 colonies into 8 colonies and I just let them requeen naturally using the emergency response. I'm going to go through each and every single one of these splits now, see if I can find the virgin. Hopefully she's not a virgin, hopefully she's mated. See if we can see eggs, see if we can see brood, and see how many we can get mated. So I'll start at this end here, from the front, work to the back. We'll go through one by one. Let's see how we go. I'm so excited and I'm so tempting fate. I'm getting my scissors out for clipping queens and I'm getting my yellow pen out for marking. They can go into this pocket here because they're definitely not getting used today. Let's see how we go. Right, how about that? First colony, I found the queen. Nice long abdomen, that doesn't mean anything. But wait, there are lots of eggs and larvae. All over 2 of the frames. So I'm going to pin this queen down, I'm going to mark her, I'm going to clip her wing, and I'll go and have a look at some of those eggs. Right, so it doesn't mean anything, but we've got lots of eggs. So what I've got in here is a queen that is laying eggs. That is all I can give you at the moment. Can't tell you whether it's a mated queen or not because I need to assess the brood. Once we've got capped brood, we can take a look, see whether it's fertile or unfertile, worker or drone. And only then do we know whether that queen got out and got mated. I'm going to say she did get mated because she looked very, very long, and the pattern for these eggs here looks very, very nice. Give you a little zoom in there, really looking good. I'm going to say we got that one mated. I'm really, really happy. What an amazing start. So how about that? 1 in 1. Can't believe it. Found the queen, marked the queen, clipped the queen, eggs and larvae, no capped brood. Let's go on to the second section. This is just craziness. Second one in, I found a queen again. There's eggs, there's larvae, not seen any capped brood yet. I'm gonna try and get this queen before she flies away, get her clipped, get her marked. Can't believe it, 2 in 2. Just a little close-up of that queen in case you didn't see her before. She is very good looking indeed, really nice long golden abdomen. There's no way she's not mated. I know that is really tempting fate, but look at her, she is beautiful. I'm gonna get her clipped, get her marked, check for eggs, and then we'll move on to number 3. Right, I'm not going to show you eggs every time because you're just going to see lots of frames of eggs. There were 3 whole frames of eggs in that nuc there. No capped brood, some larvae, so brood in most stages but nothing capped. So at the moment they are still unproven and they might have issues with the pattern that they're laying. They look very nice though. Queens do look very nice, very long. So fingers crossed they turn out okay. I will do an update, so if you're liking this video, hit the subscribe button. You want to see what these bees look like once they go into their nucs. Let's go on to the 3rd section now. Right, can't find the queen in that one. I've gone through it a number of times, but I've got something even better to show you. I've got capped worker brood. 100% got a good queen in that one. Obviously need to check that laying pattern for a little bit longer, but I've got a mated queen whatever happens. Can't find her though, so I'll have to come back and clip and mark that one at a later date. We can't do the straight run of eight out of eight. That is just not even possible. So this one here, number four. I found the queen. I've got eggs, but no larva, no capped brood. So I'll clip this one. I'll mark it up. Looks like it's mated though. Nice amount of eggs. Nice laying pattern. But you just can't tell until you see that worker brood. So as I said at the beginning, I would have been so happy to find four queens and have four of those splits to be mated. We're on four. 4 in 4. Let's see how we get on with the next one. Well, I went through all the frames on that one, couldn't find the queen. Loads of eggs though, 3 frames of eggs again, so looking good. But as I said, don't know until you see that worker brood. Let's go back in, check for 6, 7, and 8. So no queen on this frame, at least I don't think there's a queen on this frame. But just check out that pollen, I thought that was definitely worth a look. A lovely, lovely pollen frame. Right, so I was just about to say no sign of the queen, but I've got 3 frames of eggs See if you can spot her. She is tucked away, or at least she was when I held her up. Another queen found. Another colony that's got 3 frames of eggs. Few larvae in here as well. Nothing capped over yet, so a few days and I will be able to tell the status of all of these queens. First frame I pulled out, colony number 7, 3 frames of eggs. It's so strange, they've all got the same frame of eggs. And another queen, another really nice healthy looking Buckfast queen. Like, I am genuinely nervous. 7 out of 7 queens, eggs. Looks like they're all mated. Let's see what the 8th colony is like. See if we can find the queen. See if we can find some eggs. This is like I've entered a cheat mode and I have completed it because that is 8 queens out of 8 splits and they're all laying eggs. I'll get this one marked. I'll get it clipped. I'll close it all back up and then we'll talk about why I shouldn't count my chickens just yet. Right, that is truly, truly unbelievable, and I promise you there is no foul play here at all. I have not been up here for 3 weeks, and every single one of those queens, I reckon, has gone out and got mated properly. I've got 8 colonies there. Every single one has got at least 3 frames of really nicely tightly laid single eggs. I've got a couple in there that have got brood in all stages, and I've seen the vast majority of the queens with nice lengthy abdomens. I'm not going to go ahead and say all of those queens are correctly mated just yet. I'm going to wait to assess what that brood pattern's like, whether it's fully worker brood, and if it's in a nice pattern. If it is, then yeah, we've got 8 out of 8, but I won't give that verdict just yet. I'll do a final video in 1 week's time just to give you the verdict on how this went. If you want to see how we got to this stage, check out this playlist here. It shows you all the steps, how I got 8 queens from 2 colonies by splitting it using the Hyde Hives queen rearing nucs.