How to Equalise Beehives - Sharing Brood - Hyde Hive Long Hives - How to Boost Colonies of Bees

Today I'm going to show you how I balance my colonies in my Hyde Hives long hive. Right, so we're back over at the Hyde Hives long hive, and what I'm going to show you in this video is how to equalize and share brood between 2 sides of your long hive. In an ideal world, both of your colonies are going to be the same size, but at various points throughout the season you might find yourself where you've got one big Strong colony on one side and a much smaller, weaker colony on another side. Now that might be because you've done what I've done, which is you've installed a nuc on one side, caught a swarm on the other side, one's huge, one's really small, or one half of your double-sided long hive might have swarmed and the other half hasn't swarmed but is showing signs of congestion. There's going to be loads of different scenarios where you're going to want to equalize it, so that's what I'm going to show you in this video. And it is the simplest method in the world, and there's only really one or two things that can go wrong and a couple of risks that you need to just keep at the back of your mind. So this is what the first colony looks like on the right-hand side over here. We've got a 14 by 12 colony covering about 11 or 12 frames there. Really big, nice strong colony primed up ready for the flows. Over on this side we've got a Swarm, and they're covering about three frames. Now this swarm, we've checked that there's a queen in there. She's laying eggs. The colony is expanding. They're drawing out comb. It's a healthy colony that would grow on its own, but just needs a little bit of help to get it going. Now I make the point of saying it's it's a healthy colony. You need to make sure that both sides are queen right. Both sides are free of disease. There's no point sharing the resource. Unless you've got the capacity and the capability of one colony to actually produce further brood, to expand on its own. All you're doing here is you're giving it a little bit of a helping hand. So that's what I'm going to show you in the video now, and it is the simplest method. I know I've said it before, but all I'm going to do is I'm going to go into this side of the colony, the strong side. I'm going to take 1 or maximum 2 frames of brood because this is a very small colony over here. And I'm just going to transfer them over, take some brood from the strong side, give it to the weak side of the colony. And I said that there's a couple of risks you need to take into account. Obviously, number one risk always is disease, so you need to check both sides, make sure there's no disease. The second one though, and the one that is quite easy to get wrong here, is to make sure that there is sufficient bees in the weaker half of the hive to keep the brood warm. And the best way to mitigate that risk is, A, don't take too many frames across, so 1 or 2 frames absolute maximum, and B is to go for the most capped and emerging brood that you can get, because that's a lot better at self-regulating its temperature. So I'm going to get into my strong side of the colony over here now, and I'm going to try and find the most capped and most emerging frame of brood that I've got. So I'm just going through my frames, and this is what you want to see, something like this. Lots of emerging brood, that's going to be the best one for you. You don't want just a frame of eggs, you don't want a frame of brood in all stages. Obviously most of the frames here are going to be brood in all stages, but what you're really looking for is as much capped brood as you can possibly find. So something like this, and that would be really, really good to share. So once you get to this position, you've identified the strongest frame of brood that you've got. Leave that over there, come back over to this side, and what you want to do is you want to make some space in the middle of the cluster, as close as possible to where there is actually brood in this colony. Don't stick it off to one side, you want it as close to the middle of the cluster of bees or the cluster of brood as you can possibly get it. So for this colony over here, we're talking in between frame 1 and frame 2, that's where the majority of the bees are. I know it doesn't look like there's many bees in there, but this is a 14 by 12 frame. It goes all the way down. I've checked both of those frames there. They've both got brood in them. So that is where I'm going to put that frame of brood. Then the final mistake that is very, very easy to make is that you could just think that you're going to go and pick up that frame of brood over there and just transfer it over. If you do that, almost certainly the bees on that frame will kill the queen on that side in the weaker colony. All you're looking to transfer over is the frame of brood, not a single bee. So the best way to get them off, give them a really good shake, shake, shake, shake, get them all off. If you need to use a brush just to get the final few off, that's fine. Any remainders on there will be very, very young nurse bees, so you shouldn't have too much of an issue with those. But it's just best practice to get as many bees as you possibly can off that frame. So your frame should look something like that once we're done, all of the bees off. Just the brood remaining. Nice little cap of stores on this frame as well here. That is perfect for adding over into the new colony. Now all of that capped brood in the middle, that's going to emerge, that's going to come out, and that's going to boost the number of bees in the weaker side of the hide hive. So then you just take your frame, simple as that, put it in the slot where you've made the gap, close them back up, and that is the manipulation complete. I think on a colony this size, the smaller colony, you only need one frame there. 14 by 12 frames are pretty big. You don't want to give them too much work. You don't want to spread them too thin. They've already got some brood in all stages that they need to keep warm. So I think one frame is going to be fine in this instance. What you can do though is you can repeat that process. So don't go anywhere with this video. As always with these videos, I'm going to show you all the steps of the process. I'm going to close this colony back up here. I'm going to add in an extra couple of frames of foundation just to give them the room to expand, and then we'll fast forward about 7 to 10 days and we'll come back and we'll look at how much those colonies have equalized. And then potentially what we'll do is we'll do it again. The idea here is to try and get the colonies as balanced as you possibly can and try and get them targeted for the main flows of the season. We're in a heather apiary here, so we're about 4 or 5 weeks away from the main heather flows. So I've got time to let some of that brood emerge, I've got time to do it again, and then hopefully once we get to the point in the season where the main heather flows are, I'm going to have 2 strong colonies that can take advantage of those flows and get themselves ready for winter. So after balancing, this is what the colonies look like again. Not a major change on this colony over here, and then when we come over to this side, obviously we've got that empty space in the middle. And then there's hardly any bees on that side, and that is because they're downstairs working hard trying to get onto that brood. So stay tuned to this video, I'll fast forward 7 days and I'll show you the impact that moving just a single frame of brood has had on equalization of both of these colonies. Right, so it's been 6 days since we added a frame of brood from that side over to this side. We're going to open them up now and I'm going to show you the difference one single frame of brood makes over about 6 days. Now the frame of brood in this side, it's not going to be completely emerged, but a lot of it will be, completely dependent on how old the brood was that you transferred over. But you will see now a dramatic increase in the number of bees on this side, and the reason for that is twofold. One, because obviously the bees emerge from the frame of brood, but also they disperse a lot more evenly to cover the additional frame of brood. And I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, and ultimately there's going to be the same number of bees, but when you add in a frame of brood like that, artificially increase the brood nest, it does make them appear bigger. So you're getting this kind of double-fold increase, one that is a genuine increase in numbers and the other is it just looks a little bit bigger. So I'll open them up now and I'll show you the difference by adding one frame of brood after 6 or 7 days. So starting off with the larger size colony on the right, obviously you're not going to be able to really tell that I've done much over there. I've taken one frame out and I've added some brood in. Take that over to the smaller colony and you can see, remember these are 14 by 12 frames, significant expansion. They are over 5 frames of bees now, where before it was probably 2, 2.5 frames of bees. So really happy with that expansion. Like I say, that frame of brood will have emerged and they were just spread out. Plenty of bees there now in order for us to take another frame of brood and to add that in. So that's what I'm going to do in this video. Like I said, it's a 2-stage approach, can be a 3-stage approach as well. Don't think you can balance the colonies by taking 3 frames of brood from the big half and putting them into the small half. Believe me, I've been there, I've done that. You kill the brood, or you kill a lot of the brood, you knock that colony back So much that you're really ruining the chances of that one producing any honey. And then the bees in this one, there's just not enough of them there to keep the brood warm, so you end up sacrificing a lot of brood. Take my advice, do it step by step, one frame at a time, at 7-day intervals. Make sure that the receiving colony can take that frame of brood, has sufficient bees to cover it, and then you just keep on going, keep on going until you get the colonies to the point where you're happy to say, right, they're evenly balanced or sufficiently balanced. So I'll follow it up in this video. I'm going to take another frame of brood, big capped emerging frame of brood, pop it over to this side here. We'll fast forward another 7 days and then I'll show you just how much this small colony has caught up with the big colony. So I'm going to take 2 frames. Here's the first one that I'm going to take. Cut out a little bit of drone brood in the corner there, don't need that, it's going to take over that First frame, and then I've got another frame as well. So I'm going to take this frame over as well. Both of these on the edge of the colony, full of eggs, but lots of cat brood in there as well. So I'm going to take both of these frames, and I'm going to add them to the smaller colony in the long hive. So same as before, take your two frames of foundation that you're taking from the smaller colony or that you've got in stores, add them into the larger colony, and replace the frames with brood. Make sure you put the brood in the center of the nest, 'cause that's where they're gonna be able to keep it as warm as possible. Obviously, shake off any bees, make sure there's no bees on the brood frames. You're just transferring over the brood frames, not the bees. You can then put everything back together, close it up. I'm gonna fast forward 10 days, and then I'm gonna show you just how big the smaller colony has become without taking too much resources from that big colony over there. Right, so we're back at the long hive and we're going to finish the video off today, and I'm going to show you how well we've equalized this long hive by taking brood from the stronger side and moving it over to the weaker side. So I'll jump straight in and I'll show you just how well these colonies have equalized. So it's the middle of the day at the moment and a lot of the bees are out foraging, but you can still see there the right-hand side colony is still over, say, 7 or 8 frames of bees. Lots of bees in there. I know it looks a little bit weaker than normal on this one, but it is because the bees are out foraging middle of the day. And then we come over to the weaker side of the colony, and they are over 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 frames of bees now. These are 14 by 12 frames, so you can see that there's a really good expansion on this colony. So there we go, that's it for the video. Equalizing colonies is very, very straightforward, but just don't fall into the trap of just trying to transfer over Frames of bees, if you transfer over frames of bees, they'll just fight and kill the queen. And definitely don't fall into the trap of transferring over too much brood at once. Take over a frame of brood, give it 7 to 10 days, let it all come out, let the brood emerge, then add in another frame and just keep on doing that on a kind of 7 to 10 day cycle and you can just keep on going. We're at the point now where these 2 colonies are very, very evenly balanced. I'm not going to take any further brood out of that colony there, Because I'm potentially going to weaken that colony to make this one stronger over here. So I hope you enjoyed that video. This one's particularly important for long hives because of the way that it's 2 hives in one. You're much better off having 2 equally strong colonies going into winter as opposed to having one really strong colony and one weak colony, because the chances are you'll probably only get one of them through. Much better off having 2 slightly weaker colonies and building them up Into the autumn. Get a really good chance of getting both colonies through the winter that way. So as always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye!