Ep157 More Springtime Tips: Keeping bees in the boxes, avoid the honey dome, get more comb drawn, know if your hive is queenright or queenless.
Beekeeping at FiveApple
Ep157 More Springtime Tips: Keeping bees in the boxes, avoid the honey dome, get more comb drawn, know if your hive is queenright or queenless.
In case you missed it:
Ep156 Spring in the Bees!
Ep 155 Interview with Colorado beekeeper and writer Tina Sebestyen
Ep 153 Interview with James Lee of SBGMI
⬆️ available wherever you listen to podcasts
Patron Exclusives:
Patron exclusive show notes on Ep 155 which includes link to the split notes compendium.
Links to Five Apple’s podcast on the Reverse Doolittle split on Patreon, with links to Tina’s how-to article as well as my own silly drawings of the process AND the link to the compendium of splits methods I teach (the handout when I speak to bee clubs)
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Here's an extra tip for those who read show notes: If you see your hive swarm, and it was a large hive, there are probably enough swarm cells left in the original hive to cause afterswarms. It's wise to carefully go in the hive and look for swarm cells on frames.
I like to relocate a frame with swarm cells, a frame with open nectar and ideally some pollen, and a capped brood frame to a nuc box and add a few shakes of bees (remember to never shake a frame with a queen cell on it if you plan to keep that cell). This is your backup insurance.
In the main hive, go through each frame carefully and brush bees off brood frames with a feather or bee brush so you can see the swarm cells. Cut them down to one large swarm cell and replace in the original hive.
You have greatly reduced the chances of afterswarms. Plus, you have a backup nuc (or three!) that will also requeen. If your main hive fails to make a queen (check 3 weeks after you do this split to look for eggs from the new queen!) you have the nuc most likely with a new queen and you can combine the two. You now have a young robust queen to go into winter!
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About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for sixteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year.