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This page is under construction but will feature information about splitting hives
Fall split that starved out. They endured a mild winter with lots of warm days and eating lots of honey to get energy to fly.
They used up all their stores in the brood nest and had plenty in the super above. A queen excluder was installed to prevent the queen from moving up into the honey super. During a 2 week cold snap, the bees starved out with honey just inches away because the cluster could not move up.
Evidence of starvation - bees head first in cells and no honey in the frame. Cluster still hanging onto the frame.
The frame facing the one above also had a small cluster with bees head first in cells and no honey on frame.
When the two frames were removed, the rest of the bees are seen on the floor of the hive. Always make sure late splits are fed enough and they can move to the stores as small clusters tend to not be able to move very fare to get honey in cold snaps, especially if the queen excluder is left on.
When I split, I usually use 3 brood frames of capped brood and the nurse bees on them. The number of frames you use could vary depending on the strength of your parent hive and what your expectations are for the new split. The more you can provide the split will cause it to build up quicker. The more you take from the parent hive the more you weaken it. The thing I try to do is not cause my parent hive to be unable to produce honey that year. I also attempt to make splits strong enough to build up as fast as possible.
This is why I usually use 3 frames of brood. I have split a hive by taking a double hive body and making two single body hives. There are lots of considerations and variables, but in short, 4 medium frames should be enough to be successful in building a new hive.
As for filling the rest of the super out with honey and pollen frames, I would only do that if I was sure I had enough bees to protect all that turf. I for sure would close the entrance down to a small hole for entrance to prevent robbing. If you have too much honey and pollen in the hive for the bees to attend, you are also inviting pests such as hive beetles and wax moths. I have made splits in the past with only starter strips in the extra frames. This was successful due to my feeding the bees heavily from the top. This is less succesful in the fall, as they do not have time to build up as much.
Is it unheard of to split a hive twice?
A strong hive could be the parent of multiple splits. If you do this, you may raise the issue of whether or not any of the remaining hives will produce honey. If you are trying to make new hives, you may be successful. If you are trying to make honey, you may not be successful. The stronger the hive the better the results here. One thing to remember is too much stress can be an agent that allows disease and pests to gain a foothold. Also remember one strong hive will produce more honey than three weak ones.
How does splitting hives to control Varroa work?
For me it works like this. I split as often as I can without causing too much stress on the hive and completely killing my honey production. I like to split stronger hives early and all my hives after the Sourwood flow. My fall splits may or may not make it throught the winter, but that is not the primary reason for those splits. If they do make it, that is just icing on the cake.
By splitting the way I do, I am in effect removing 1/3 of my mites from a hive by removing 1/3 of the brood where they are raising. The parent hive obviously will benefit there. What about the split? I believe they also benefit, because of the hives vigor to build a new colony and sort of out produce the mites. I add another step to the equation by not putting a queen with my splits. I add fresh eggs to the split and allow them to raise their own queen. I find this successful most of the time. You have the option of keeping this queen, or replacing her later. The reason I do this is to allow the hive to have a cycle of broodlessness. This period allows no reproduction of the mites as there is no brood for them to raise in. When you raise queens like this, you have roughly 30 days from egg to egg laying queen. As you can see, the August splits sort of become September splits because no brood is being raised. This is why I say my primary reason is for Varroa control and not increasing hives. Many do not make it.
I also use screened bottom boards which reduces mite level by approximately 10% in estimates. My hives sit 2 feet off the ground also. I feel this further limits the posibility that any mites falling off will make it back to the hive. They can crawl fairly fast and move farther than you think. (If you have not seen it, you may want to see my video I made showing the mites in brood and crawling around.
To assist the hives even more, I use a variation of drone trapping. As I said earlier, I have begun to allow my bees to build there own comb using only a small strip of foundation at the top to get them started. This allows them to build the comb the way they want to build it. They tend to build MORE drone cells this way. Mites are 12 times more likely to enter a drone cell than a worker cell. This has two effects. It makes my workers less likely to be affected and it allows me to trap without using drone trapping frames.
If I have a mite level that concerns me, I can freeze a frame of brood that has lots of drones in it to kill some Varroa. I figure by putting drone comb in a hive you possibly weaken it without the need to and the bees will sometimes build other size cells on the foundation anyway.
When I freeze a frame with lots of drones cells, I am also freezing some workers. But if I make a frame with only drones in it, I am removing 10 percent or more of my worker production. So killing some workers in a freeze will not make that much difference and may even be better solution. Besides, you do not always need to freeze and with my option, you just let the brood hatch if you dont need to treat. With drone brood, you just have extra drones even if you dont need to treat. I think the way I do it allows more fexability. I also spot check my drone brood by uncapping to see if they have Varroa infestation. If not, I don't worry too much about freezing.
In addition to all this, I do monitor mite levels to see if some passive treatments may be needed like powdered sugar. I mostly look for survivor stock and do not worry too much about loss of weak stock. This, in the long run, should provide genetic answers to our mite problems.
I have noticed my best hives are mongrels. They have mixed genetics as evidenced by the light and dark bee mixtures. This is another reason I like to raise my queens locally. If there are survivors out there in the woods somewhere, I can tap into the genetics of there drones and possibly bring that back to my beeyard.
I do reserve the right to use organic chemical treatments to keep from loosing all of my bees, but so far I have not had to do this as my proceedures outlined above have been enough. I don't want to "prop" up my bees, but instead select them to be survivors.
