I split one of my colonies today (1st August 2018).
The colony housing a 2015 Queen and comprising 2 brood boxes and 1 super has now been split (with the queen free to lay in both boxes). Why did I make the split? Because I found 1 queen cell, not quite capped and containing a pearly white larvae inside it. There was only 1 queen cell but it was at the bottom bar of 1 frame. All the books indicate that swarm cells are generally found at or near the bottom bar of the frame and there can be several of them; an emergency cell can be found almost anywhere; and supersedure cells will normally be less than 5 in number and all in the middle/centre of the same frame. But all experienced beekeepers keep telling me that often the bees just don’t read the books! And in this case, given the time of year and the ample space available to the bees, and the space available for the queen to lay, and the good amount of stores available for the colony it seems unlikely that they would want to swarm. It’s more likely that the queen may have past her prime and may not be communicating pheromones that are acceptable to the worker bees. It is therefore more likely that the bees have decided to replace the queen themselves i.e. supersede.
To split the colony I needed to find the queen. I had tried to find her 4 days ago and couldn’t. But I did today. Most of her ‘blue’ mark has rubbed away from her thorax. I removed the super and put it to one side, then I removed the top brood box and placed it onto an upturned roof and placed a cloth over it to keep those bees in the dark. I was then free to check the bottom brood box, frame by frame. I did that by separating the frames into pairs thus creating areas of light and dark in an effort to try and control the movement of the queen (queens try to move away from the light). The queen was not found in the bottom brood box. I put a queen excluder on top of the bottom brood box and put the top brood box back on it. (This meant that if the queen was in the top brood box i.e. if I had not overlooked her in the bottom brood box) she would not be able to move back into the bottom brood box while I was checking the top).
I found the queen in the top brood box and when I found her I moved the frame she occupied into a nuc box for safe keeping until I was organised. My plan was to separate the brood boxes and, on completion, have the old queen at a new location (with no queen cells) and keep the other brood box containing the ‘supercedure’ queen cell in the original location. I also kept the super at the original location above the brood box containing the ‘supercedure’ queen cell. Why? Because the bees in the super can fly. And all the ‘flying bees’ will want to fly back to the original location. Therefore the hive at the original location needs sufficient space to accommodate all the bees. (Whereas the hive at the new location will only consist of the old queen, brood, honey stores and pollen – flying bees return to the hive at the original location – and only the bees that have yet to hatch from the brood at the new location will consider the new location to be their place of residence).
Because the bees at the new location are not yet able to fly and bring forage back to the hive I needed to supply them with extra ‘food’ – to make sure all their honey stores are not consumed and then the bees are not left to starve. I placed a quilt over the brood box then a super to house a contact feeder containing sugar syrup. In an effort to prevent ‘robbers’ (there are temporarily no ‘guard’ bees at the new location) I temporarily reduced the entrance to 1 or 2 bee spaces by placing some loose grass at the entrance. I have also placed a hornet trap and a couple of wasp traps close by to attract and trap potential robbers.
Why did I make the split? I could have left the bees to supersede naturally i.e. just let the bees get on with it – without any intervention from me. But the new ‘supercedure’ cell first has to hatch. Then the emerging virgin queen has to mate. And then I need to observe her laying. At every stage there is a potential for something to go wrong .e.g. she may not mate etc. So, at least by removing the queen from the original colony I am making sure that if the new queen fails I will not have lost a queenright colony.
I calculate that the virgin queen should emerge on the 4th or 5th August. I will then need to wait for at least 2 weeks before I check again to see if I have a new queen that is laying. If I have a positive result I will unite the bees from the hive that is now housing the 2015 queen (after removing the 2015 queen). Time is marching on. Ideally I would like this process to take place in sufficient time to be able to treat for varroa by the beginning of September. (adding 2 APIVAR strips to each colony).
I extracted 23lbs of honey on 9th June. I will be removing another super from colony #2 tomorrow. Hopefully this will produce a similar amount of the golden stuff.
Bess's Bees 