I have one hive that has made it through the winter so far. It is the one that has consistently done well over the last four years. I would like build up with these bees. What would be a good plan to do it? How many splits can I make out of a strong hive going for growth and not honey this year? I have usually only done one per hive. Thanks for any help.
That depends on how many bees and how much brood is in there. I make what I call "weak" splits from two frame of brood (although it's not really weak depending on flow) and stronger splits from 3 or more frames of brood. I've made 5 splits of strong colonies before.
Scott
The hive is a strong one. Lots of bees out today. Temp here is supposed to get to 70, but snow and 30 on Sunday. I probably can't make a split until later.
For splits you need to have queens ready, or drones flying to make your own queens.
Yes it seems still early for split.
You could split half. Let them build back (that would be quickly; they have the forces) and split again half and you may be able to do that 3 times, on the cautious side. It depends on the flow(s) in your area.
im assuming your not grafting queens.
and assuming what your wanting to do is get the max # of hives from your one so the genetics are maintained.
it could be done this way as well.
find queeny and put her into a nuc with enough bees food and caped brood so that the hive thinks it has swarmed. that way she does not swarm out and you have her secure
take the remainder of the honey, open brood,capped brood and most important frames with eggs and divide among many nucs being sure to include eggs in every nuc.
move queen's nuc so that any foragers leaving the nucs will not go back to her.
place queenless nucs where the old hive was and you have the first round of queens coming.
after they are laying you can then pull one frame from each nuc every so often and use them to make more nucs.
be sure to keep feeding as long as you are splitting and allow the earlier splits to build up to larger hives and keep using the excess from the nucs to make more nucs.
by fall you will have a few weak hives that can be overwintered as nucs so you have spare queens and the rest should be able to build up enough to over winter well.
that would be how i would go if i didnt care about a honey crop.
bailey