How to Split a Hive Without Needing to Locate a Queen

I'm going to show you guys how to split a hive without necessarily locating the queen first thing I'll do is make sure I got white smoke the entrance lightly lift the lid crack it get my Pub of smoke right under here no take the lid off check to make sure the Queen's not on the lid she's not there get the bees off the top bars and I can see this colony is pretty strong getting ready to possibly think about swarming is I'm going to start inspecting and these frames and do a quick glance for the queen in the upper box okay she's unlikely to be on this Frame because there's nectar on that frame so I'm not going to waste time on that frame and she's unlikely to be on this Frame so quick to glance because it's all nectar on this Frame here's what I'm going to do I do this here make it easier for me to grab them later so this when I put frames temporarily in a box I typically do it like this but easier to handle here's a drone trap frame and this time of year it's very common to find the queen of the Drone crap frame so I'll look a little bit longer on the Drone traffic this is all drone brewed right there okay so I'm only going to do a quick glance here to see if the queen is easily found because if you find the queen you do not then have to do the next step which is the shaking of the bees so quick lance look for the queen again unlikely on that frame because there was no young brood on that frame so you get pretty much guess which frames the queen is going to be on by what's on that frame I'm getting near the center of the brood Nest so I looked down in the frame still in the box when you first pull the frame out you got about four or five seconds where the queen is very easy to spot and it gets very difficult after the first four or five seconds because the queen moves but when you first pull the frame apart she stands out like a sore thumb often get her on the first glance so no young brood here no place for the queen to be laying eggs so if there's no place for the cane to be laying eggs she's less likely to be there if I found a frame that had open cells and eggs in it that would indicate it's more likely for the queen to be there because that's where she is laying eggs okay what I'm doing here I'm just cleaning these Combs up a little bit some of the drone boot here so I don't roll a queen when I put these frames back in okay and it's looking like the queen is probably in the lower box it's just fine because that's where we want her to be anyway and we're all done and that's nectar there if this were open cells that would be likely for the queen to be there but it's not open cells it's nectar there's no guarantee whatsoever that the queen is not in the upper box so they're going to remove this box shake the piece down make sure the clean is not in this box if these guys can smoke then going down knock off this rear comb sticking out so the bees want the Burger on there for some reason we don't um just because it makes it hard to handle the frames the bees like to make that bridge between the wooden frames to walk over a bit and actually I have a friend in Chile he actually puts in this Burke home saves it when he puts the box of foundation on he puts it back on top to bridge off the lower Combs onto the foundation um he does so he could so now what I'm going to do is add all these bees back to the spot make sure the key's not on here oh I'm also checking for Queen cells on the bottom bars of this upper box to make sure that the uh this cone is not going to swarm this is we're right ass storm season in this Colony are just making Queen cells I swore very very soon and at this point I'll use this time right now to clean up these frames put that vertical them off so you don't roll the queen so you understand the point here what I'm doing is just getting all the bees off these columns double checking to make sure the few remaining bees that there's no on them and I can look really carefully on this drone because it cleans what they like to be on those okay now we're going to go ahead give this piece a little bit of smoke and down off the top bars okay you guys all go down okay now take a cleaning scooter and push these out of their way so don't crush the bees come on guys get out of the way there you go just nudging them getting them out of the way put the closer down I return this box okay now we're all gonna at the same time give them the order we're gonna say after me I'll say what's gonna say peace walk up and fill the upper box again ready all together okay we're gonna come back in about 15 minutes and the bees will have completely covered their frames again and now what we have is a box with bees and brood and no Queen and bees improved down below with a with the queen we can then remove that upper box and then do whatever we want with those split those into into a new single split it into two nukes split into three nukes add those frames to other bees uh colonies that are weaker do whatever we want but we without ever seeing the clean we have just separated the queen down into the lower box now we're coming back to this High 20 minutes after we put the box with no Bees above the queen excluder and as you can see it doesn't take long for those bees to pass from the bottom box up to the queen Explorer and return to the upper box so remember there are no Bees in this box at all 20 minutes ago and now you can see these have repopulated this box and it takes it usually takes using about a half an hour sometimes even faster than that you can come back then and then remove this box for your your split so very quickly the bees will pass through that 20 sitter and repopulate the upper box

Channel: Randy Oliver

Views: 3,973

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Id: -HIxryJo2PE

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023