Tom Pankonen Honey Pimp Apiaries Splits! Tom Pankonen Honey Pimp Apiaries
Agenda Who Why When How
Who? ANYONE! Ask for help from a mentor if your not comfortable New Experienced Ask for help from a mentor if your not comfortable
Why? Chemical free mite treatment Prevent swarming Increases Emergency backup plan Replace failing queens Replace a rolled queen Laying worker Solstice queens
When? Blackjack rule, see two queens ALWAYS SPLIT! You find an extra queen cruising around Queen cells When the hive is strong and running out of room for brood During a nectar flow
How? Walk away split Requeen Queen cells On the spot queen rearing method
Walk away split Pull the second brood box off and set it on another bottom board Make sure there are egg in each box The bees will make a new queen Keep in mind this will make you broodless for about 2-3 weeks Check boxes in two weeks for queen cells / queen / queen sign
Requeen Take a few frames of mature dark brood (2-3) Frame of wet nectar / honey and pollen No queen! Let sit for a day If your not confident in spotting the queen let it sit 3-4 days and make sure there are no eggs. Maybe check both the original and the split for good measure. Add queen cage Check for eggs in a week
Queen cells Take the frame / frames with queen cells Take a frame or two of mature capped dark brood Frame of wet honey and pollen NO QUEEN Check for queen sign in 2 weeks maybe 3-4 if the weathers bad Keep in mind brood can come from multiple hives so you don’t stunt them too bad
On the spot queen rearing When you have a strong hive, split taking the queen, two frames of dark brood, wet frame of nectar / honey and pollen At the same time notch on or more frames where you have YOUNG larvae Take your hive tool and smash in the bottom of a few cells on two spots for good measure They will draw queen cells In 6-8 days take the frame with queen cells and follow the queen cell split directions If you make two frame splits make sure its warm especially at night and they will build slower then 3 frame splits
Other notes Don’t forget to always take a nuc with frames every time you inspect that way your ready if you find cells ALWAYS replace frames in both the NUC and hive or they will make a mess of brood comb FEED SPLITS! Your success will be MUCH better on a nectar flow It’s possible to do this during the dearth feeding aggressively Utilize nucs for drawing comb and making brood for additional nucs if you want to make increases Nucs will fill VERY fast during a strong flow especially in a few days when bees start emerging
More notes Be patient on queen mating! Sometimes your good in a few days sometimes it takes weeks especially if the weather sucks Make sure you have purple eyed pupae or ideally mature drones before starting this Queens are cheap, bees are expensive Solstice queens are great for requeening weak hives