I will be splitting three hives today. This will be a first. I'll try to get pictures. Wish me luck.
Well Good Luck. ;) I'm sure all will be fine, the bees naturally want to increase their population this time of year. Are you letting the splits raise a queen or are you putting queens in?
Made the splits, kept one for myself. Split one hive twice and pulled enough frames from the others to start four nucs.
Sounds like you are having better luck this spring than we are north of you. In talking to some of the area beekeepers they to are slow to make splits due to slow start the spring. Dan
Rich, beauty, now doesn't that bring that smile to your face, beautiful day in this great life, Cindi
daniel
Were not that far apart. I'm just South of Beloit Wis. about 1 mile. My hives come through the winter strong and I've been worried about them swarming. I still have concerns about one so I added an extra deep and put out a swarm trap. I used to fish Lake Gevena, great smallies.
Sounds like you are doing well!! I had the same thing last spring. This year I lost three of five hives over winter. I had some packages coming from Lapps until they were vandalized. I found some nucs that will arrive this week. It was a sad thing at Lapps but they were able to replace the lost bees in a week. Hope they can catch the Vandals. Hope everything goes well. Dan
I will be making some splitts next week and I want to know how good are the queens that the bees raise on their own?
i have had better luck with the queens raised in my hives, than those i have purchased. i suppose it depends on the drones that are around for them.