Making Splits With Adam

Today we're learning how Adam makes his splits in the same apiary. So we're doing a full series of videos in Adam's apiary today with Black Mountain Honey Buckfast queens, but in this video here, Adam's going to talk to us about how he makes his splits using bees from the same apiary. So you make loads of splits, Adam, talk us through your process.

Uh, yeah, it is a lot more difficult, um, because you, you do get a lot of drifting back to the original hive. You just have to overcompensate really with, you know, extra bees, bit more brood maybe, just to make sure they do keep the bees. And I've also found that if you try and just keep hold of the nurse bees on the brood, it helps a great deal, 'cause they tend to stick with the brood or the eggs.

I think you covered most of the main things that I was going to say there. So yeah, overcompensate, put more bees in, Brood definitely attracts them, but yeah, nice tip with keeping— when you're pulling the frames of kind of open brood out, you've got all the nurse bees on there, like don't shake them, put them in really gently and they just stay put, don't they?

Yeah.

When you make a split, so say you were splitting this one here and you've got a queen in here, do you move the queen with the split or does the queen stay in the existing?

It depends what's the reason you're doing the split for. If you're splitting to prevent swarming, yeah, I'd move the queen every time. If you're splitting because you don't want to put another brood box on and you want to create another hive, then yeah, you could keep the queen there and just move over the nurse bees. With capped brood is a lot better, a lot less work for the bees as well. So if you can use just the capped brood to do your splits, that's beneficial.

Yeah, it's true. Capped brood needs a good warmth in order to keep the brood warm, but it also self-regulates a little bit as well. So it has warmth in it. So it requires fewer bees to keep it warm versus, say, open brood. And then obviously, if you can get some bees to stick in that location for a short amount of time, you've got emerging brood, then all of the brood that is emerging instantly or orientates to that new spot as soon as it goes out to become a forager. So if you were splitting this hive here, say we were taking up a 6-frame, or say we were taking a split out of this hive, a nuc out of this hive, where would you put this new split? Obviously, the original one would remain here. Like, where would it go in the apiary?

Put it as far away from the original hive as you can. But I've found that if you pick the right day as well, so if it's not a really warm day and you can get away with putting some grass in the entrance to keep them in there for a short period of time. If it is raining, that's perfect because they won't be flying and the longer they're in there, they're going to then reorientate hopefully. But I think the grass does make a big difference in the entrance.

Some really nice tips there. Grass in the entrance, you just like loosely stuff it, don't you?

Yeah, well, to be honest, depending on the temperature, if it's mid to high 20s, yeah, you've got to be careful if it's too tight, keeping them in there for too long, overheating. But if it's cooler, sort of 20 or below, you could pack it in quite tightly. And then as long as you're going to see them in the next day or so, then it'll just wilt down, you see, and some bees will slowly filter out. Yeah, I think it's knowing sort of the weather's a big one, isn't it? You don't want keep them in there to overheat.

No. And the grass is a really good idea. The idea behind the grass is that it blocks the entrance partially, so when the bees kind of have to go through it, they realize something is wrong, something is different, so then it forces them to orientate. That's what the textbooks say, but it just slows down the bees going out and going back to the new hive. So what some people like to do is they'll just make a split and put a bit of tape over and just like tape them in, like lock them in for 24 hours. And you're right, you wouldn't do that on a 25-degree summer day. If you're doing that on a cooler day, you could just tape them in 24 hours overnight. Making the splits in the evening, is that something you do?

I try and plan that, yeah, that would be better just to give them— and I think the other thing I didn't mention before was that you can put, if you've got the kit, you could put a— get your capped brood, preferably capped brood, stick another brood box on top, stick those in the brood box above and make the split with those, and the nurse bees will tend to move up to the brood and the rest will tend to the nectar and what have you. So that also attracts a better selection of nurse bees, I've found.

It's a really good way of doing it. I've done it before. You take out some frames of brood, put them off to one side, get your brood box, queen excluder on top, another brood box, and then you put the frames back in empty with no bees on, put the lid on, and all the nurse bees come up, don't they? And it's a perfect way of doing it if you've not if you're not able to find your queen. Yeah, so if you've shaken all the bees off, you're putting just empty frames of brood in, and the queen's underneath the queen excluder, so only the nurse bees can come up. Really easy way to make a split without finding the queen. Other thing I was going to say is, what do you do in terms of feeding? Because this is always the problem that I've had with making splits in the same apiary, is you're a bit restricted, aren't you?

Yeah, so I found queen introduction does work better if you, even if there's a flow on, give them a bit of feed, and I think that does Whether it distracts them from balling the queen or whatever, I think it does help a great deal. So if you've put a little bit of syrup in a feeder, it keeps them sort of preoccupied maybe.

Have you ever had the issue though where you're like, make a split, take it over to there, and then because you're putting the queen in in the different site and you want to start feeding it, where the bees will start robbing from this hive, going and robbing the new feeder because they kind of know where it is? Do you leave like a delay in between feeding?

Yeah, the big one is just don't spill any syrup once they get a smell for that. And the other thing is with the wasps, you've got to watch with the— if your split is too small, the wasps will rob it out quite quickly. Fortunately, I haven't seen any wasps this year.

It's been the best year ever for wasps. There's probably wider implications to the environment, but for beekeepers, it's been a very easy year for wasps. I think that's good advice though. If you're making splits in the same apiary, And you're moving it over there and you want to feed the queen, don't feed them straight away. Let all of the bees that are going to bleed back to the original hive bleed back. I would give it 3 or 4 days. Make the split, give it 3 or 4 days, and then feed. Very, very easy way to get your entire nuc robbed out if you make the nuc, move it over somewhere else, feed them on the same day, and they just— all of the bees from the original hive just go and rob the nuc and you just get left with loads of brood and it's very frustrating. Right, so if you were making a split up, let's do 2 versions. If you were making a split up at the beginning of the year, What's the configuration? Like, how many frames of brood, how many frames of stores, and what's your method? Like, do you like to go hopelessly queenless? And then we'll do one for late on in the year as well. So first up, early on in the year, say maybe like Maytime.

Maytime, yeah. Queen, I'd split them all early on and requeen and then keep the nucs so you know you've got the backup if the queen fails in the main hive. The makeup would be as much capped brood as you can, 2 frames minimum, I'd say, covered in bees. Then you want at least one frame of stores and pollen, and then you sort of keep the brood together, depending on the time of year. So early year, it's not going to be as warm, so you want to keep that brood together, maybe the foundation sort of on the outskirts. And then as it warms up, you could— or they build up, you bring that foundation and maybe checkerboard. Get the queen in a nuc with 2-cap brood and some stores. And then introduce your— so depending when you get hold of your queen, if you plan ahead, which is quite hard to do, you know, if it's solely your job, then maybe it's a little easier. But I found I sort of order them in batches, and then it might be one is hopelessly queenless, one isn't. I found you can introduce that queen caged. Don't pull the tabs when the queen's been removed.

Instantly.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. Yeah, 'cause a lot of people ask me this question, do I really need to wait 8 days to do it? And the answer's definitely no, but I find it improves the rate of success and I like to give people the 100% option. But I hear many people, including Adam, saying, you know, I get upwards of 90% doing it straight away. So what Adam does, early season splits, you're taking the queen out, aren't you, to help with swarm control? And then as soon as he takes that queen out, makes a split, gets a new queen in a cage, Puts it straight in there, pops the tab straight away. Do you not even wait 24 hours?

No, no, I'd— sorry, I missed. So I would always wait 8 days.

Oh, okay, so you do wait 8 days. Okay, so some people don't wait 8 days, right? So go on, you wait 8 days.

So I find you can— some people like to wait 8 days hopelessly queenless, then add the queen caged. I found it hasn't made much difference whether I add her a day, 2 days after she's removed.

Gotcha, okay.

Stick her in, always wait that 8 days. Obviously removed the queen cells and then I've started using the masking tape method as well.

Yeah, okay.

Just to help. And that's worked pretty well this year.

Yeah. So early season splits for Adam is he's doing it to reduce the swarming impulse on his big colony. He's taking the queen away, putting a new queen in, waiting 8 days, shaking off all the bees, taking down the emergency cells, reintroducing the new queen over here using the masking tape method. And then he's got 2-frame split with a frame of stores, so 2 frames of brood, 1 frame of stores, waits a few days and then starts feeding. So that's your spring technique. If you were going to make up— you've probably made up all your nucs to overwinter, but if we cycle back a few weeks from now, if you were making up some splits for nucs to overwinter, how would that process change?

Because at the moment, I mean, I haven't got an enormous amount of honey, so I didn't want to knock my hives back so much that they're not going to even cap the rest of the supers.

Yeah.

So I would take, yeah, the same sort of, um, if some of them I have taken the queen out and done the split, and some I've just taken some brood with, uh, capped brood with, with bees on and shaken bees from a couple of colonies so I'm not diluting one too much.

Okay.

And the same, you know, with the brood, I can I get 2 from one hive and 2 from another for another split. You're not diluting them too much, they'll build up quick enough, and then you pop your queen in the nuc and introduce the 8-day.

So you're kind of doing the reverse that time, you're leaving the queen in here, she's a new queen, she's going to overwinter, and then you're introducing the queen into your splits over there, but you're taking brood, like some from this hive, some from that hive, merging them all together.

And the bees as well, I think There's various things that people say you can get bees from 2 different hives or 3. I shake from 2 to 3 hives and mix the bees in. Another tip I've also found is a bit of—

We love tips.

Go on. Air freshener. This can also work for joining 2 hives together as well. blast a bit of air freshener in there and it sort of masks the pheromone, and then they do accept her quite easily. If I was joining 2 hives together and, you know, the queen I didn't want to be killed, I would give that extra protection of a piece of newspaper and the spray. But I think with doing the splits and there's no queen to do damage to, a bit of air freshener, and that would—

Yeah.

I think that aids the integration of 2 or 3 different types of colony.

Yeah, possibly. It's a really good tip, that one. And what the textbooks say is you put 2 colonies of bees together, they fight. But if you put 3 colonies of bees together, they don't fight. And textbook's not right on that one. I make splits with 2 all the time and they don't fight and it's fine. So if you want that added layer of protection, you're right, air freshener, you just spray it in. I know a lot of people doing like newspaper combines or even just direct combines with air freshener.

Yeah.

And it's, you wouldn't wanna get it anywhere near your honey, would you?

No.

But it works really well. And I think you can get some quite nice organic sprays and stuff. I think people use like Glade, it's one of the ones, one of the popular ones. Cool, okay, so that's, that's really, really useful I think. I don't make a huge amount of splits in the same apiary, Richard makes all of his splits in the same apiary, every single one, and he's got a technique for it and he uses a lot of those as well, so it's really useful going through that and kind of hearing how you do it, so thanks Adam.