How To Split Your Beehive The Easy Way

[Music] hello bearded B people welcome back to bein KB's on last week or I think it was the week before so two weeks ago I made a video called how to encourage build up in your hive and it just went nuts and then I went back and looked through and realized that some of the best performing videos that I've ever done were how to's and seeing as it's May 30th a lot of us are thinking about splits I figured I'd do a how to split your hive this one is going to be geared toward a simple walkway split so this is for the absolute beginner or the person with very limited free time or very limited time with which to play with their bees and this is just as simple as it gets I think a lot of people go to their high of thinking about splitting with a lot of apprehension and a lot of you know you're timid and you're not sure of yourself but hopefully this video will make you a little bit more confident and realize that it is not as hard as it might seem so we are going to split this hive like I said walk away split style now what does a hive need to be able to be split obviously ideally it will have a lot of everything a lot of bees a lot of brood a lot of food in both nectar or honey and and bee bread pollen but the absolute essentials are only bees enough to keep the brood in each half warm and eggs or very young larvae in whichever half does not have the queen so because like I said in a lot of videos in the past you know that's all they need if the bees know they're queenless and they have an egg or they have your very young larvae they will turn that into a queen very quickly and readily so in terms of a walkaway split with a hive that is at least two brood chambers tall and this looks three but there's a Kleenex right there I think in 99% of the cases you're going to be able to just take one box and set it in a new location you're not gonna have to find the Queen you're not gonna have to go frame-to-frame what I will suggest though is that you at least very quickly make sure that there are eggs in both boxes if you don't see eggs in one box you know grab a frame from from the other one and put it in there just to be sure because if they don't have a queen and they don't have anything that is a viable you know of viable age then they will become what's called hopelessly queen list and you'll get laying workers and you'll have to do a whole lot of stuff to repair that problem so we're gonna make sure that there are eggs in both boxes and that's pretty much it if you want to go deeper into this process you can find the Queen and make sure that you move her to a different location so therefore the Queen Liz hath will get the benefit of all the returning foragers but if both boxes are populated well then that shouldn't even really truly be necessary it's just an added step and a little bit of insurance so let's see what we see and talk about it there's probably not a whole lot going on in there send it off to the side alright this box looks pretty good as I expected it to there are bees covering what maybe six frames up here so I'm gonna quickly as I said make sure that there are eggs up here if there aren't I will make sure that there are before I close these up that's food all right there are eggs in the emerged portion of this there's a lot of brood there and it looks like a lot more of pretty much everything throughout the rest of this box so I have confirmed there are eggs in this top box so that's all you need to do in a walkaway spliff I'm going to remove it and do the same with the bottom box okay so the bees are covering nine frames down here everything except for that crappy old frame once again all I need to do is make sure that there are eggs that is food that is some more food on both sides there's a little bit of brood surrounded by mostly food and the other side has eggs and the queen right by my thumb there which is that was not the goal once again you do not have to find your queen utilizing this split method but if you do then you'll know and you'll be able to treat each half you know and the way that you would treat a you know a queen list and the Queen right portion of a split so what I'm gonna go do is grab a bottom board and another cover and I'm gonna move the Queen right portion but remember it would not have mattered they both have the ability to make a queen and they're both you know packed enough with nurse beasts where they're not going to get any children or anything but I'll be right back after grabbing a bottom board and a cover okay so let's pretend that I didn't find the Queen and I don't have any idea which box she's in mm so I'm just going to randomly select this one because it has more bees in it to go to the new location because the foragers are going to return here so if you don't know which one the queen is in leave the less populated half in the location oh boy that's a heavy box okay so the only other stuff that I can think of to make sure of is that you're not leaving one vastly depleted in terms of anything food bees or brood like I said before if you do know which one the queen is in it's my suggestion that you move the Queen to a new location it does not have to be multiple miles away as long as there are nurse bees in both boxes then both boxes will retain a decent population of bees but like I said the foragers will return to the old location and a queen will emerge somewhere around two weeks after you set that out take 16 17 ish right around you know 16 and a half days for a queen to emerge after the egg is laid and they usually choose about a two day old larvae so maybe a little under two weeks before the Queen will emerge and then give it another two weeks for her to have the opportunity to go out and get mated and come back and then after that a four week or thirty day period you should be seeing eggs and if you don't then you can recombine those hives or allow them to try again and give them some open brood consisting of at least partially some eggs but you can get in there in two weeks I don't suggest getting in there before then because you might rip a cell apart but get in there in two weeks and go searching for a virgin queen they're hard to find but you know you get better at it over time but usually there's not a whole lot of reason because there's not a whole lot you can do at that time so you won't know whether you found her or if she's just being you won't know if she's in there if you don't find her because sometimes she's just impossible to find and and so you won't really be able to tell whether you had a successful split or not until you either see eggs or too much time has passed but don't think too hard about that at this point in the process the vast majority of splits end up with with a nice fat mated queen after that 28 to 30 day period so yeah that's just as easy as it is the another benefit to splitting this way is that you're you're kind of hitting the the mites a little bit especially if you give the Queen right portion less capped brood then queenless portion will have a break in the brood cycle and the queen right portion will have gotten rid of all or most of their founders mites so if you listen to me talk about mite management I suggest splitting every hive every year in this method for that reason so but yeah this is how you make a walk away split or how to split your hive the easy way or whatever you want to call it thanks for watching guys thanks for so much support over the last two weeks that's pretty crazy pretty cool but yeah click like if you liked it click subscribe if you're not already but get out and have some fun with your bees see ya

Channel: B&K Bees

Views: 204,285

Keywords: beekeeping, backyard beekeeping, split a beehive, walk away split, beekeeping tutorial, how to split a hive, how to split, how to split a beehive, honey extraction

Id: hLbuBqfkZXw

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018