How To Split A Beehive In Spring - Making Strong Two Frame Splits For Reliable Colony Growth

Hi, I'm Lawrence Ederson, Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. So it's the middle of April. I've got some imported queens, F1 Buckfast. I'm going to make up some nucs. I'm pinching some frames of brood from some really strong colonies, and I'm replacing that with some nice foundation or drawn comb. So I'm kind of killing two birds with one stone. I'm giving the colonies a little bit more space where they're Slightly honey-bound. That should suppress the urge for swarming. I'm taking some of their brood, I'm taking some of their bees, I'm leaving the colonies to expand. Still plenty of time to expand here in North Wales. So in these 6-frame nucs, I've got some stores that I've got that I've been storing over winter. I'm going to add 2 frames of brood, loads of bees, mated queen, give it a week or so, release that queen, and then I'm going to feed them. Slow trickle feeding to get them going. I'll do a follow-up video later on in the year showing you how well the bees have come on, I think they'll be up to full strength around middle of May, back end of May. So I'm going to get my bee suit on and I'll show you how I set it up to make 10 6-frame nucs. Right, so what I'm looking to do is to take 2 frames of brood from this brood box down here, and I'm going to put them into this nuc here. I'm going to replace those frames of brood with some 14x12 foundation. That's going to really help this colony out because this colony is struggling because it's a little bit honey-bound. So it's going to help suppress swarming by reducing the number of bees, and it's going to help suppress swarming by giving them something to draw out. Means the queen can expand and she can lay this up. So first thing you need to do is to set up your 6-frame nuc. So I've got 4 frames, some of them are drawn out, some of them got a little bit of stores in there, and then I'm going to take 2 really nice sized frames of brood. I'm going to shake a load of bees in there as well. So first thing you need to do whenever you're shaking bees out of a colony, Find the queen. Make sure you find that queen first. Don't shake the queen in. That is a recipe for disaster. You'll end up with 2 dead queens over here and no queens over here. So first thing you need to do in this colony, find that queen, stick her in a cage, make sure she's well out of the way. So once you've found your queen, nice strong plastic cage around her, put her off to one side, and then you can work the colony really well. They might get a bit grumpy when you take their queen away. I like to take it outside the colony because sometimes those cages do fall out. Make sure the queen doesn't go in that box down there. So then we're going straight in to identify some brood first. Before you shake bees in, put some brood in there. Gives them something to cluster around, means they don't just go and fly off anywhere. So we've kept a couple of national frames in our 14 by 12s, and we do that kind of this time of the year to make some splits. And as you can see, they've just filled it out with drone brood at the bottom there. So we're going to remove all of that drone brood And then we're going to take the frame of brood and replace it with 14 by 12 foundation. So then once you've detached that drone brood, or if you're on the right size frame, just take the frame of brood. You've not got a queen on there. You can place that over into the nuc. Then take your next frame of brood. You want really good capped emerging brood here, as close to emerging as you could possibly get. Don't do this with loads of eggs. You want capped emerging brood. That's going to boost the strength of the colony. So that's it. We've got 2 frames of brood in there now. We've got some bees. We're just going to shake some more bees into this colony. And then once you've shaken 2 or 3 frames of bees in there, get the lid on this colony and close it right up. And then all that's left to do is to take the frame that's got your queen on it, take your queen cage off, make sure the queen's okay, pop the frame back into the colony, put the frames all back together. Keep that brood nest all close together. Then take your frames of foundation or drawn comb, and what I like to do is straddle either side of the brood nest. So you have all the brood in the middle, foundation, foundation on either side, and then your stores. That gets them working it really quickly. So that's it. I've got 9 more to do, and then we're gonna go to the next apiary and we're gonna finish off the video there. That's a really important tip for you there. Don't try and put your mated queen in here. Because if you leave that colony there, all the bees are gonna do, they're gonna fly off over there, come back into the main hive. That's why you need to close it up. And then you're just gonna get left with like untended brood and the brood's gonna die. So this video is designed to move the nucs from one apiary to the other. Needs to be at least 3 miles away. So all I'm doing now, going to the colonies, taking the lids off. As you can see, lots of really nice bees. Remember, it's the 2 frames in the middle that are the frames of brood. We're just gonna hang that frame in between the 2 frames of brood. I like to just wedge it in. This is why I like these cages. It makes the introduction really, really easy. So take your queen, double-check she's still okay, she's still in there. Do not undo the tab. Really important, don't undo the tab. We're gonna come back in 7 days from now and we're gonna check to see whether there's any queen cells. They're probably gonna raise some queen cells, and this is why I always like to do a bit of a delayed release for this queen. They will take care of her for the next 7 days through the cage, no problem whatsoever. And then after 7 days, they're hopelessly queenless, and I can clip that tab, take them out. That's my process anyway. Sometimes you can do it a little bit earlier, sometimes a little bit later, but that's my process. In this colony here, we've got 2 frames of brood, 4 frames of either stores or empty comb, no queen, and we're gonna add the queen now. So really important, When you're wedging that in between the 2 frames, make sure it's wedged in well and make sure it's horizontal. If you have the fondant above the queen, you can get warm weather, drips down all over, and she is a goner. So just make sure you've got it nice and wedged in and it's horizontal. And that's it, these guys are good to go. We're going to close these up, we're going to come back in 7 days, and we're going to release that queen. Right, so 1 week has passed since we put the mated queens into our made-up nucs. And what I'm going to show you now is what the colonies look like inside. So what we're expecting to see is a lot of that brood will have emerged. Hopefully the queen is still well sealed in her cage, and hopefully she's still alive. And also, almost certainly, you're going to see drawn emergency queen cells. And this is the reason why my process has a 1-week gap between introducing and popping that cage. To give you the chance to get in there and take down all of the emergency queen cells before you take the cage off the queen. So that's what I'm going to do in this video. I'll show you every single frame, I'm going to take down the queen cells, show you that the queen's still okay, pop the cage, and you could probably get away with leaving them for a couple of days here. This is just my process. I get around here once a week. The following week, we'll cut to it later on in this video, you will see the queens have been let out, the cages are empty, There's no queen cells, and hopefully we've got eggs. So I'll get my hood on, I'll get into the colonies, and I'll give you an update. So what you can see here is that the colony has expanded a little bit, and you can see they're condensed over those middle 2 frames of brood. That's their purpose. They want to keep that queen warm, and they want to keep that brood warm. So if you looked at that from the last video, they're kind of a bit scatty, they're a bit all over the place, not sure what's going on. They have real purpose now, and their purpose is To draw out queen cells, to protect the queen, and to keep that brood warm. So you can see in there, really nice behaviour from the bees there. There's no frantic trying to kill that queen, trying to ball her, trying to overheat her. They are passing food through into that colony because they have very much accepted that queen. Now do not confuse that with the queen has been accepted and you can open the cage and just let her walk in. Or the risk of them still balling her is still there. So you want to do what's called a slow release, and that's what we're going to show you in this video. So no cells at all on this frame, that's good. You wouldn't expect them on this frame, this was just a honey stores frame. Lots of nice fresh nectar in this frame though, so really good to see that the bees are bringing in nectar. There's enough bees to keep the brood warm and to bring stuff in. So then next frame, it is a frame of brood, was a frame of capped brood and is now pretty empty because a lot of that brood has emerged, still a bit emerging. What I suggest on all of the frames though where there is brood, any signs of brood, shake the bees off. Make sure you don't leave a single queen cell hiding because they will protect one of their own queen cells over accepting a mated queen. So I'll go through all of the frames first and I'll shake them off at the end just so they don't go a bit crazy at me. So then another nice frame of brood, and at first glance it doesn't look like they've made any queen cells. And when I shake off this frame, you will see why I recommend shaking off the frames because they hide them So well. So there are at least 4, I think, that I can see at the moment, queen cells on this frame. I'll do a before and after shot, see if you can spot where they are with the bees on. It's very, very difficult. Just goes to show though, they were queenless for about an hour and they've drawn out queen cells. So you need to be on top. This is the belt and braces method, and it gives you pretty much guaranteed success rate, other than if there's something that's gone horribly wrong. So let's not say guaranteed, let's say a 99% success rate. Much, much better than if you don't go through this 2-week process of releasing the queens. So there is the queen cage. As you can see, you can see that queen running around in there with the white spot on her back, just over to the right-hand side. She's coming through now. There she is, up by the fondant. So we've got a healthy queen in the colony still. They haven't killed her through the cage. We've still got lots of attendants, which is really good. and a good sign of how healthy the queens were. Now, if you look here, the cage is still intact. I haven't opened that tab there, and that's what we're gonna do today. So then next frame, mostly honey again, may have had some brood in there, and it's emerged fully and they've gone back over it. I'll shake this one off as well just to be sure. So I think this is probably just a frame of stores. And then the final frame, definitely a frame of stores. Won't bother taking a picture of this one. I never put brood frames at the edge of my nucs that I make up. frame nucs, and a couple of them were 3-frame nucs in terms of the amount of brood that I put in. So no need to take a picture of that one, that's definitely stores. So I think you'll agree they've come on loads in a week. That's what you get, that's why you want to go for the emerging brood, because you get real good growth like this. That's only 4 of the frames there, another frame over here, so plenty of bees. What we're going to do now though is we're going to go through each one of those frames and we're going to shake off all the bees and we're going to take down All of the queen cells. Now, it doesn't matter that you're going to damage all of the cells by shaking this frame because you're trying to take them down anyway. So obviously, if you're going to keep any of these cells or you wanted to use them to make up other colonies, you can do that. Not my preferred method, but they're viable cells. So if you want to chop them out, use them for something else, go ahead. Obviously, don't shake the frames because you'll potentially dislodge the larva. So here is the problem. Like I said, they were queenless for one And they've drawn out 2 emergency cells there. I know they don't quite look like emergency cells because they're on the edge of the frame, but they definitely are. There was no swarm cells in there before. Everything else looks pretty good though, but you just need to go over every single part of the frame. If anything's in doubt, crush it down, make sure there's no larva in it, and then you've got a really, really good chance of acceptance. So there's the queen cell there. You can see I've taken them away. Bees trying to tend to it there, but yeah, there's a larva in there, probably a nice healthy larva, but yeah, that's going to be discarded. Check all over the rest of the frame, make sure there's no other queen cells there. Same again on this frame, you can see starting at this end, all good, nothing to see here, all of that brood has emerged, and then whoa, 4 big queen cells in the corner. And the bees, they will, they'll choose these queen cells over accepting a mated queen, They can sense them, they've tended to them, they've grown them, they've filled them up with royal jelly. You can see the bees there over them doing a little bit of feeding. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't, but what you definitely don't want is these swarm cells or these emergency cells in your colony when you're opening them out to the queen. So once you've got them to a position where you've eliminated all of the queen cells, you can take your mated queen in a cage and you can take off that little cap. There. So then the bees have got access to go in here and they're going to release that queen. And they release the queen really quickly, like it is a really quick thing to do. What you don't want to do is go back into this colony and check at a later date. So I'm just working quick now because it's starting to rain. So I've taken the cap off here and I'm just going to place that back in, in the middle of the colony, put it back to where they were clustered before. And then I just want to get that lid on just so the bees aren't annoyed by this rain. So that's that part of the manipulation complete. It's a long-winded process in terms of the duration of the process, but in terms of the actual effort, it's really, really quick. Like, I can do each one of these nucs, this part of the manipulation, in about 30 seconds. So it doesn't take me long at all. I get straight in there, clip them out, take the clips off, shake off all the bees, take out all the cells, do them back up again, come back later in a week, and then you'll see Hopefully we got the queen, hopefully we got the eggs, no more queen cells, and then the nucs are good to go. So we'll fast forward another week and I'll give you an update then. Right, so here we are, 7 days after I popped the cage of that queen. And I'll just reemphasize it again, leave it a good while, at least 3 days after popping that cage, to going in to check in to see. That's how I find I get a really, really good introduction rate. So it's 7 days after, We're gonna finish the video off here. I'm gonna open it up. Hopefully we're gonna see the queen. Hopefully we're gonna see eggs. Hopefully we're not gonna see any more queen cells. If we see all of those 3 things, so eggs, queen, and no queen cells, we've got a successfully introduced queen and the startings of a nucleus colony. So let's get inside and see what we've got. So as you can see here, further expansion of the colony. They're over about 4 or 5 frames now. Not paying as much attention to that queen cage because more than likely she'd been let out. But lots of bees in here, really, really nice temperament. Let's get inside, see if she's in that cage. So we've got a nice empty cage, nothing inside that cage whatsoever. And you can see there they have taken out all of the fondant, eaten that all away. So they've either killed the queen or she's been successfully introduced into the colony. And there she is. Hovering around the top there. I'll get a little close-up for you. The queen is walking around on the frames. Really, really happy to see her there. Always great to have a successful introduction. A little bit cold, so I'm going to get these bees back in there, but the queen is on the frames. Really good to see. And then the final thing we're looking for is eggs. And as you can see from this image here, we've got eggs in the middle 2 frames of the colony. So I've ticked off all of my objectives here. No queen cells. I've seen the queen and I've seen the eggs. And that is the end of the manipulation. I made a successful 2-frame split and introduced a mated queen. And I've checked all of these colonies and I've got 100% acceptance. And there you go, that's the end of the video. So what I've showed you in this video is a step-by-step process on how to make splits using 2 frames of brood and a postal mated queen. It's a really, really simple process. It doesn't take that much effort, but it does take about 2, 2 and a bit weeks to get through all of those steps. My advice, don't rush it. I've done it before, and you try and do it, you try and condense that process down, and you could end up getting that queen bald. And then all you end up doing is starting the process again and doing it properly from the beginning. So my advice is just follow those steps religiously. Take your 2 frames of brood, Give them a week, let them draw out their queen cells, go in, take down all those queen cells while the mated queen is pinned into her cage. Once they are hopelessly queenless, release her from that cage with a slow release, let the bees work in through that fondant to release her, and then give them that week. That is, I'd say, the biggest mistake that people make, is that you do the first bit, you take down the queen cells, they're hopelessly queenless, and then you Unpop the cage and then you go and check after a couple of hours, or you go and check the next day to see whether they've accepted her, that disruption can really annoy the bees and it just puts them off the queen. I don't know the reason why, but it definitely does. So my recommendation is, like I've said in this video, just give it 1 week after you pop that cage. Hopefully you'll go back in, you'll see the queen, you'll see eggs, and then you know she's definitely been accepted. So that's it for the video. I hope you found that one useful. We're going to do more videos like this throughout the year where we split them up. So this video was shot over about 3 weeks. We're going to piece them together and try and give you a nice long consistent video that shows you all of the way through the process, as opposed to feeding you out off into separate videos. So if you've got any feedback, if you've enjoyed this video format, please let me know and we'll do more of them again. But I hope you've enjoyed watching. 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.