Using swarm cells to split a bee hive.

hello mr ed here today is march 18th 2021 we're here at the abbey and back in the back of it where we've got probably about i don't know maybe 20 or so highs back here and this morning you know what we're doing this morning we're making splits or at least we're going to try to make splits we've been trying to make splits now for two weeks but it just hasn't been working for us because when we go open our boxes one the boxes there's not enough bees in them to to really be able to split for the way i like to make splits and there's and there's not um we haven't found any queen cells in them and i want to make my splits using swarm cells so today was two weeks since i've been looking at them and i'm really hoping by today we'll find some cells in them today so why do we why do we make a split the reason we make a split it's real simple we don't want our bees to swarm if you want your bees to swarm don't worry about it they don't want to do anything they'll swarm and they'll it'll all work out but since i want to i want to do two things i want to grow bees and i want to make honey those are the two things i want to accomplish and to do that i need to split the bees because i need the bees and then i need to split the bees because then that increases our honey production as well so there's reason that i do it but people keep bees for whatever reason they want and so if you have a clear idea of what you want to do how you want to do it well then it it makes a little bit simpler in choosing the direction you want to go at sun is about eight o'clock in the morning the sun is right in my eyes right up there so i'm kind of squinting trying to get it out of my eyes and it's a little chilly this morning uh we had a really really massive front move through last night at around midnight last night got lots of rain and right behind that rain for the temperatures they just dropped we were we were running into 80 85 degrees almost all this week and here today thursday our temperature right now is about 50 to 53 degrees something like that it's chilly and and the wind is blowing but it's still warm enough where we can get into our hives and start looking for ourselves so that's what we're going to be doing today we're going to be opening up our boxes and because we did our rotations back in january in the rotations what we do is we take our top box and move it to the bottom and the bottom to the top and the reason we do that is because by then the bees have gone through all the stores in the bottom box and they're now in the in in the top box so we want to get the bees down below the uh the empty box and then allow the bees and to come up into the box like that and that way at this time of year march which is almost six weeks after we do that do our rotations we should have two boxes of bees and ideally what we're gonna find is we're gonna open our box and you're gonna see six seven frames of bees in both the top box and the bottom box and then hopefully we're gonna find queen cells 95 percent of the time when we open up our box our queen has moved up into our top box into the top box that's where she is almost 95 percent of the time so when i open the box that's where i'm going to be looking for swarm cells in the top box there may be swarm cells in the bottom box but it's highly unlikely but i still check for those as well because what i want to do is i want to take these frames that have the swarm cells and i want to transfer them from the box that has a queen into the box it doesn't have a queen and that way i can make a split i'll remove the the box that has a queen i'll pull it off of that box off of where the original hive is and then that way we'll do our split any bees that were in the queen any field bees that were in the queen box they're going to return to the original sight box and those numbers of bees will swell up whereas the the the bees in the in the queen box is going to drop and that will kind of slow her down from wanting to swarm the bees in the bottom box since they don't have a queen all they're going to do is be bringing in the nectar and the soup the food the numbers won't be growing in that one but we're going to have a lot of bees in there bringing in resources so charlie's with me here today charlie back there oh yeah i'm here charlie's here with me filming and um and he's also here with me to help me move some of these boxes it's by the grace of god we'll go ahead we'll go to get this done yeah we got all about 60 of them to do here at the abbey and hopefully we'll get these done at least by tomorrow you're ready i'm ready let's go let's wrangle it it's taken us like 20 boxes to finally find a really good example of a capped swarm cell we've we've come across a lot of them that were still developing there was there was the uh royal jelly was in it but there wasn't a larva but here on this one you can see the cap is clearly visible on this one as well as this one right here and i saw another one too uh this one just isn't capped but but and then yes here's here's the other cabin right here so we've got one two really good frames that we can make a split out and we're gonna take these these two frames out we're gonna drop one into this box and and we'll have another one to do another split down the line now i will say this we had a really really severe cold snap that came about three weeks ago now and it just it just knocked out bees for a loop and and so that's why we're seeing this late development for us normally our boxer would be full of these caps one cells but right now these things are really hard to come by and this is the ones i prefer to make in my splits with there's three types of cells that bees make and make one a swarm cell a superseding cell which you'll find on the face of the frame and then an emergency cell and out of the three types of cells the swarm cell is the swarm cell and the superseding cell are the best types and the reason for that is these cells were built to make a queen they're they're elongated they're and the queen prime is which is the really the great greatest reason the queen lay the egg inside of this so you have a fresh egg you don't have a a older egg either one two or three day old egg that emergency cells are made of so ideally a swarm cell and a superseding cell or your best type of cells for queen and so we're going to take these swarm cells and make our splits with and you would think that the word swarm cell that these queens are going to come out and they're going to swarm but no they're not they're gonna they're gonna come out they're gonna know that there's no queen in that hive and they're gonna become the queen of that hot and the first queen that comes out if i have more than one cell in it she's gonna go around to that cell and kill that queen so the first queen that emerges that's going to be the the queen of that high and we're going to move this box off to the side in fact i'm just going to place it right next to this and the any field bees in this box that can then go into this box let's go ahead and do our split now you'll notice that our bees are congregated on these one two three four five six seven really six frames right here these four frames right here there aren't even bees on this so we're going to pull some of these frames out to give us room to get to these frames right here and then we're going to transfer a frame from from the side the bees are working on into here so we're going to keep that balance going on so i'm going to move this box search this box for our queen pull these two frames that have our cells on them transfer one over here and then we're going to move one into another box um now when you open up that inner cover you'll see a lot more bees now on top of this i just want to check this to make sure our queen isn't up here and since she's not up here i'm going to bounce these bees into this box and now we're going to remove some of those empty frames on this outside right here that way we're not going to damage our cells we definitely don't want to do that all right we've got three frames removed now we're gonna go frame by frame and we're gonna look for our and we're really going to be looking for her on a frame that's got newly laid brood i mean she could be anywhere in the hive but that's generally where you're going to find her and that's really how you know you've got a queen is by how much or if there's brood in your box again these are all nectar and honey frames so there's enough stores in here for the bees that's for sure and it's been my understanding and what i've seen that the box that has the queen cells the swarm cells on it that's the box that your queen is located on look at this we got look at these beautiful cells up here these two cells right here they're on the face of the frame and that would tell me that these cells right here these are superseding cells in other words these bees they were getting ready to replace this queen these are superseding cells and this cell right here that's a swarm cell so we have two different types of cells on the same frame so that that's a really this is a really great find right here i may try to cut one of these cells out probably this this cell right here and try to use that separately in a split but this is this is really tells me that these bees were getting ready to get a new queen oh look and then on the back side of it another superseding cell right here yeah this queen she was going to get replaced and she's there's definitely going to be a new queen in this box as well another superseding cell and this is a swarm cell right down on the bottom these are beautiful beautiful cells that's got to be an inch and a quarter inch and a half long beautiful cells so that's the fifth one that we've seen fourth one that we've seen at this point it really doesn't matter to find their queen because she's going to get replaced anyway look at these beautiful swarm cells right here let's just go ahead and look through this box right now all right so what we're going to do in this space right here we're going to take the frame has the two superseding cells on it actually the three superseding cells on it and we're gonna drop this frame right here now i know there's another superseding cell in there and we're going to keep that one in there as well so here's another superseding cell and a swoon so we're going to keep both of these cells in there remember the first one that hatches out and it's going to be this one because she's capped this one isn't she'll come and kill that one as well as that old queen that's in here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to keep this frame as a spare as i go through we've got a really nice warm cell right here this one's not capped and i can't tell whether there's a larva in there or not we've got one of them right here so that's enough we can do a split with this frame so we're gonna knock the bees off of this one set this one on the side there's tons of bees over here we're gonna go ahead and close this one up now all right now we've taken the one frame out of here so we need to replace this frame and the frame that i make the split off of another hive that's going to go in here so we've done made our split we've made our split superseding cells in this one storm cells in this one and and superseding cells so that's a good good split right there so that's all i got for you in this one so thanks for watching keep on watching we'll be making more god bless good time charlie and mr reed that's thread we're out until the next video [Music] i want to show you a trick that i've learned as i've been doing my my splits using swarm cells and and you can see this formula is all right here look at this all these swan shells and if i don't want to use that frame i want to cut those cells off but the problem with cutting off swarm cells is that you cut the backs of them and then they become no good so i've i've learned a little technique and like to share that with you and it's really just a woodworking skill that i've known about woodworking and that's using the grain of the wood to work for your benefit so what i'm going to do let me show you exactly what i'm going to do i like to use that that filet knife and the reason i like to use that belay knife it's long and thin and being it's long and thin i can get inside that frame kind of deep you could use a utility knife pocket knife whatever you want but i find for myself using this filet knife works really good and we're gonna focus on this cell right here that's the one that we're gonna focus on and because the bees attach the cell to the wood itself when you try to cut that cell off it exposes either the lava on the inside or the royal jelly and it makes the cell no good so the trick i now do and it works almost every single time is i'll put my knife right above the cell and carve into the wood and then slice on down and not go real far from the edge keeping very close that edge and that cell will just pop right off and it's going to be attached to the wood watch how i do this i put my knife above the cell and i cut into the wood maybe only about a sixteenth of an inch and as i cut in that deep then i start coming down and i'm just shaving that wood really soft and look at that that comes right out of there and it's going to be perfectly okay look at so that of seeing royal jelly or larva you see a little piece of wood now that cell is ready to drop into another box and make another split that is a really great little trick next i'm going to cut this whole line off right here this is where that long blade is nice because i'm going up inside of that wax and cutting it all off look at that now we yep that's just that's a drone right there as is this so none of our queen cells were damaged and taking them off [Music] now that is a lot of swarm cells right there let's go put these in the box so what what's the reason why why do i do splits well i got those bees they didn't like that

Channel: Jeff Horchoff Bees

Views: 71,653

Keywords: Using swarm cells to split a bee hive., what is a swarm cell?, what is a superseding cell?, what is an emergency cell?, splitting a bee hive before it swarms, technique used for removing a swarm cell from a wooden frame, why use a swarm cell to make a split?, Are swarm cells good to use to make a split?, Adding brood supers after making a split, using a filet knife to remove a swarm cell, how easy is ti to damage a swarm cell?, putting a swarm cell on a frame

Id: asttghT_XGU

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021