In our ongoing attempt to take over our Granddad's bees we have run into a problem. We have a hive with six deep wells stacked on top of each other. We believe that they were just stacked there for storage and this massive colony of bees decided it looked like a good place to chill. Our current plan includes:
1. Splitting these into three different hives.
2. Rigging the comb to empty frames we are currently building.
3. Ordering a new queen for each hive.
In planning this we have come up with some questions that I thought the great minds of beekeeping (registered users of this forum) might be able to help us with.
-How do we keep the bees in three hives instead of them just abandoning the hives and all trying to fit in one hive with their homies?
-Should we knock off two boxes from the top, wait a week and repeat or knock it out in one fell swoop?
-Will they have enough time to build up honey stores for the mild eastern NC winter if we do it now or will we have to feed them?
-Should we wait until the spring?
Any help would be rewarded with warm feelings and pictures of bee stings.
Thanks,
Jimmy and Mark Makinson
First, do you have queens? Or access to queens? I tried to make a few calls two weeks ago to find every seller in my area was swamped with orders.
If you have queens, you can do it now or wait until spring. Either way. If you do it now, you need to do it ASAP as time is running out to do splits. Like this weekend if possible.
You can make sure that they stay in three separate hives as long as there is brood in each hive. Go through each box and evenly divide up the number of capped brood, uncapped brood, and food stores among the three hives. Watch for drifting.
You may need to feed, depending on how your fall flows go. I'm not sure of your area, so I can't tell too much about that.
Thanks for the fast reply. Mark says he has a lead on possible queens in a town not too far away. Also, if we're doing the splits this year we were planning on sometime next week. I've gotta work this weekend. Thanks again.
Seems a little late in the year to do splits at least where I live maybe not where you do... I think that I would wait and winter them through then split them in the spring.