Beekeeping 101: Swarm Prevention & Splitting Your Hive

hey guys it's finally time to make a split today we're going to take a hive that overwintered well we're going to split it and move it down to my new apiary that I'm making and get that rolling today you're going to learn how to take off the winter be kind make your splits look for Queen cells got a lot of work to do today guys thanks for joining me and I know you've been waiting to do a split and wow we're gonna have to find out about this winter be kind that we put on there and let's give it a little smoke look at them using the top entrance there's a little spider right there and we're going to just get this smoked good and see if they use the winter be kind much over the last few days we've it's been on there maybe three days now after we have that little cold snap one night I wanted to feed him again let's get this smoked good underneath there and I'm wondering if there's Queen cells in there that will make this split a little more easier but really all I want to do today is move out about four frames all right wow wait a minute they devoured that in just three days look at that that's insane that's how hungry they were you saw me put these on oh my gosh I'll Replay that video right here so you can see when I put this on what day it was you want to be kind on hopefully it sits flat and even it does that is that is astounding to show how much bees eat when it's cold out so let's go ahead and get some smoke on these bees and uh wow they may have starved out if they ate five pounds of sugar and that limited amount of time that I had that on there I'm shocked get all the bees off of it it is completely gone with the exception of a little bit there that was just so good that I was motivated to put these on during that cold snap by the way bees actually stay warm when they eat and so that helped them to stay warm that night of course this probably is a huge Hive all right let's take a look let's get some smoke on here this is the top Super and oftentimes I come out of winter with my queen up here in this top Super so we're gonna have to find the queen and not necessarily as important in making the split because if we wanted to we can make this split and as long as we have eggs in both the mother Hive and the split it'll work fine yeah I never can stress the importance of feeding bees I know I know a lot of you might hear people tell you that you know feeding bees isn't really all that important I assure you that it is I've spent years learning how to keep bees alive in the winter and the missing ingredient why a lot of people lose speeds in the winter time is because they're not feeding them going into winter and they're not feeding them during the winter let me pop in here before we make this split and say guys thanks so much for watching and please subscribe and give me a thumbs up I can't tell you how much it helps my videos when you click on subscribe and click on that you like the video thank you let's get back to make this split now my temperature is going to be in the high 30s every night that's not going to hurt a split going to be in the 50s 60s for a few more days and then we're going to bounce into the 70s so it's soon enough okay that's your typical looking frame of nectar right there I'll show you the next one Here We Go Again lightweight I'm looking for eggs when I look like this I want to see if there's any eggs that are potentially being laid that would tell me if my queen's up here and so I'm kind of looking more for eggs at first before I start looking for the queen and I don't see any eggs if I don't see any eggs I usually don't spend any time trying to find my queen now a lot of times when you're doing your inspection I do find that some beekeepers make the mistake of getting involved in too heavily and trying to find the queen like right now my objective is to make a split I'm not worried about finding the queen I'm not going to spend my whole life all my inspection time looking for the queen right here we have larvae eggs and larvae so the queen is up in the Super or has been recently so we're going to look carefully wow there's a a bee with some bright red pollen inner pollen basket that's amazing walking around where did she get that red pollen that's pretty cool looking all right let me look for the queen on here searching I don't see your oh they're kind of on top of each other so it'd be hard to see if the queen is there I'm not going to spread them out too much let's just keep looking around a little bit let's look at this next frame I use a j-hook hive tool so that I can put it down here pry up that breaks loose the propolis seal for those of you that are new to be keeping this is your first year and you're kind of worried about how to use a hive tool this J hook Hive tool works really well for me well as you can see there's cat brood in the center and egg some larvae on the outside edges this is real typical for me to come out of winter I purposely feed from the top with my winter be kinds and so the queen will get to laying up in these top supers and that is fine for me all you have to do is throw a queen excluder under this get the queen out of there and then let all that brood hatch and you're back to having a honey super again don't spend all your time looking for the queen all you're wanting to find when you make a split is make sure you have eggs and the mother Hive and make sure you have eggs in the split either one of them can raise their own Queen if they have eggs that's what I'm intending for them to do is just a little bit more fun to know now that right there on the bottom if you can see that that's drone brood there's no Queen cells some of you might be looking at that saying Queen cell that's just extra wax comb that has been put there straight comb no problem no Queen cells over here either looking for the queen a lot of good brood in the center it's amazing how strong uh this high is and all of my hives are like this overwintering colonies has become a a very enjoyable very successful thing for me I don't ever think about losing a hive in the winter anymore and I know that sounds like I'm blowing smoke but you can see it firsthand can't you making this split is more important than finding the queen because like I said it's so tempting like I'm doing now is to waste all your time inspecting and having the hive open just trying to find your queen and that that might be a waste of time unless for some reason you just have to know which where to put her you know if you're trying to isolate her trying to move her into another place or something that's important but as long as we get eggs and the split and here the other Hive can raise their own Queen and that's what we want them to do it is so windy right now it is just crazy windy actually very difficult to make videos very difficult to work bees when it's this windy but we're getting her done sometimes you just gotta Cowboy up and get her done right all right let's get some smoke on this and let's separate this super and let's take a look at the deep below us I'm going to set it on the ground behind me all right I got some drone brood here the white larvae or Pupa it's just drones some space of straight comb right there that's all that happened that is fine I'm not gonna fool with it I'm not going to remove it I'm going to leave it right there I take the frame out closest to the wall it has the least amount on it and the least chance the queen to be there and I don't want to roll my queen and kill her this is a super frame and a deep box I do that sometimes I got some pollen in this frame look at that yellow pollen nectar yep quick eyes on it see if there's a queen she could be over here she has been known to walk around but since I don't see any eggs anything like that I'm gonna say no problem let's get a little smoke on them yeah this is the full Hive isn't it so again this is I think April the 4th coming out of the of out of winter with colonies this size is pretty awesome got some more red pollen I don't know if you can see that but some of these foragers up here have some pink pollen on their back legs very beautiful I have eggs on this Frame and by eggs I mean they have tilted over a little bit that means the queen laid them about 12 hours ago so the queen was on this Frame 12 hours ago which means she could still be there so I'm looking carefully for her see if she laid those eggs she'd still be there I'm not seeing her while I'm looking for the queen I'm also looking for frames to bring over to my split so I need some frames of brood needs some brood and food for my split I could work these beads today without any gloves on they're very gentle I hate that the wind is blowing this very lightweight frame which means it could be brewed on it oh yeah a lot of brood on this one as you can see on this Frame there's a lot of eggs and larvae indeed so let me look for the queen see if she's on here you know it's so windy it's hard for me to hold this Frame and if if I was not a YouTube content creator I would not work these beads today it's too windy for me it's not really doing you know the beads any harm but it's just too windy for me to get out here and try to hold frames up high in the air like this so um this might not be a bad frame let's remember this one we could use this in our split because it's got a lot of eggs and larvae on it a little bit of cat brood so we'll keep uh keep this one as a thought that could be taken over into our split this one's a little bit heavier it's a super frame and it does have cat brood on it look at that some pollen cap brood looking for the queen the reason the last frame would be good is because it has eggs on it too all right so this is a good one to take right here because it's got cat brood we're going to go ahead and put this one in our box so here's the frame that we just removed we're going to put it right here part of our split we need three more uh you guys all are interested in making splits this is a simple way to make a split it will curtail any swarming for a small amount of time not forever but a small amount of time maybe it will curtella swarm run off the bat especially if you see Queen cells and then you can move those Queen cells into your split but look at that brood there look at you can see larvae and you can see capped over brewed now again this is a good frame of brood that I would like to take I wouldn't mind taking this just because it's easy it's available let's I'm going to drop it over to the other uh split over there now if I accidentally did something bad and killed the queen uh then there I'm going to make sure there's eggs in both my split and this mother Hive and they'll raise a queen from that I'm also checking the bottom of these frames to see if I may possibly have any Queen cells down there so far I haven't seen any Queen cells this would be a good frame for the queen to be on because it's it's very new comb new to last year probably and I could see the queen wanting to lay it's all prepared for her to lay there's a lot of different ways that you can make splits and by no means is this the only way I make splits differently myself not always the same so this is just a way to do it that's quick and easy they built a little column a couple of columns there no Queen cells at all now the frames that I took out will have to be replaced so I've got I've got two two frames out right yep two frames out so we need to put two frames in this now the time to put the two frames in is now got some comb here that's drawn out that I'll give these bees a couple of frames of drawn out comb oh that's wide isn't it all right you can see how I've dialed in the feeding where it's not crazy too much but it is enough to get the bees through the winter like they don't have a ton of food nor do they have a ton stored so even though we were feeding the winter be kinds in the winter we didn't over feed them some people think feeding them is going to be too much but we've kind of got that dialed in with the mixture in the winter because winter be kinds always go on sale August the 1st of every year and we sell out within a few weeks if not a month or two looking at the bottom for Queen cells I see none I need two more frames to make a split I can take them out of the top Super if I have to because there's brood up there but I'm going to go ahead and look now this typically doesn't have as much resources or brood in it because it's on the bottom but we're going to take a look and see to speed things up uh we're gonna we're gonna pull this Frame out here look at the two middle frames see what's in them okay very little now the queen does go back down here to start laying a lot of people think you've got to reverse boxes I used to really Advocate reversing boxes but I don't do it much anymore because I just don't feel a need to do that so now what we're going to do is put this Hive back together again this one is full of larvae and eggs so those are going to be kept over in just a few days and they'll be a great Workforce in the future and it has a little bit of cat brood on this side but we're going to take this one and put it in our split okay it looks good let's replace it with a drawn out comb over here not bad all right let's push everything towards the center so we can alleviate gaps between frames keep everything tight all right now let's put our super on we still need one more frame for our split that'll give us four frames so we need one more frame a lot of B is here bringing pollen in today yellow white pink all colors of pollen are coming in today this is the first nice day we've had to really do much with bees all right nothing kept over here but again a lot of eggs and a lot of larvae here all right so here we go putting our last of the four frames that we're making our split out of in this box here in this deep box again we're putting uh the super frame in here because it has The Brood on it that we need and we need to put the brood between two of these frames here because pupae is the incubation temperature we want to keep it nice and toasty is put it right here yep all right now we need uh let's see how many we've got one two three four five six seven eight nine so let's put another drawn comb next to this one let's clear everything up good get everything close to Center that means a little bit off of this one and then let's bring everything tight my way like that see how I'm moving everything tight toward me like that I'll need one more frame and I have it right here I'm going to put it right here in this Gap never leave a frame out or the bees will build a comb that you don't want in a certain place where you don't want that comb to be so you be careful to leave a frame out all right well there's our split right there we're going to move it into position in our new apiary yard I like these new lids I can't say enough about them they're awesome these new top covers are my go-to top covers these are available on our website so check those out okay I got my hive stand I got my new bottom board I need the top cover all right here's our split I'm just going to set it here for travels as we travel to the next place and we need a top cover beekeepers stay healthy moving big cinder blocks around these should stay muscular all right let's put the hive stand here I love these plastic Hive stands so much all right so I'm going to bring the hive over here oh my hat blew off that's how windy it is all right there we go wow is it windy got a bad storm coming in again in the next day maybe tonight and tomorrow bad storms that's why the wind has kicked up [Music] let's go to the middle one since that's where more of the bees are gonna be fun to watch the split see how it does we hope they take a new orientation flight they're about 2 000 maybe 2 000 feet away from the other apiary let's be where I'll be putting all of my hives here over the next week or two I got a lot of work cut out if you guys are new to beekeeping or if you want to learn more about inspecting your hive I've got a great video right here helping you know what to look for like we just did in this Hive how do you inspect your hive I'll see you over there

Channel: David Burns

Views: 31,884

Keywords: Beekeeping, beekeeping 101, Beekeeping tips, beekeeping training, how to inspect a hive, smoker, smoker fuel, beekeeping classes, beekeeping basics, beekeeping for beginners, how to start beekeeping, save the bees, lighting a smoker, david burns beekeeping, varroa mite, when to start beekeeping, packages of bees, queen bee, bee suit, beekeeping business, splitting a bee hive

Id: T_aIboWopgY

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2023