What would happen if I did a cut down type split on 2 hives, and then combined the queenless remainders....would it be chaos?
sorry for the repost of my question, but I am hoping a better subject line might prompt some experienced answers.
Last summer I did a false swarm split on my long hive. Since the room was there I just put the old queen portion of the split on the far end of the hive..."temporarily"
well, temporary did what it often does (around here) and I never got around to moving it out. BY fall the 2 colonies completely filled out the long hive. Both sides survived winter well and have been growing quite fast. It is getting a little silly now with supers going on last week at each end just to provide some space for what are very packed hives going into an early spring bloom.
The plan is to move one side out ASAP. In the process I was going to steal a queen and some frames to stock an observation hive, and hopefully split out a strong nuc as well; but I am waiting for consistently warmer weather and drones flying for the queen(s) they raise to replace the ones I take.
One thought that has occurred to me is to take the existing queens and enough frames for the nuc and the OB hive. I could do this as a cut down split on both halves, then pull the follower boards and combine the remainder.....but how will the newly queenless combined hives react? Will it just be a mess since there is no existing queen to accept? or will they just team up nicely to raise a new one?
I could also just remove one side, and possibly have enough resources in it to fill the OBhive, and have two strong nucs (without queens). The hive left in the horizontal rig would get all those foragers back....unless I leave one nuc in the back end....but that's how this all got started.
Of course my limited experience and the bizarre spring complicate things some. The timing for a cut down split would be about now from what I understand (dandelions just starting, apple in 1-2 weeks) but things have gone cold, with 4-5 nights ahead in mid 20's and no drones flying yet.
any thoughts?
I don't think it will be chaos. If you do a newspaper combine it surely wont be chaos. You will just end up with field bees going back to the original location of the hive you moved.
yeah, the field bees don't worry me.
Everything I read about combines has one of them queen right and the other is usually deprived of a queen for a few days. But in this case there will be no new queen for them to "want" to accept. and I want to know how that will effect the equation before I proceed.
Because it's a long hive a newspaper combine might be a bit tricky. I suppose I could make a follower with a large hole that I tape newspaper over. That would probably be safer. I did a normal newspaper combine last fall, and there was still a goodly sized pile of casualties in front the next day, but after that they were happy.
I had been thinking just pull the queens and brood frames I want, then pull the follower boards push the rest together, and leave both entrances open for a few days till it is sorted out.
Never tried it, so don't know, but I would pull what you want to pull, then move the frames to each end and leave an open space in the middle. Then fill the open space with empty frames. I think the empty frames would work as well as the newspaper in a regular combine.
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It depends what you are doing
"gimme a solution and I will invent to you a problem"
I am trying to:
A) reduce the horizontal hive to 1 colony
B) stock an OB hive
C) split off a nuc or small colony
D)relieve some swarming pressure from what are genetically swarmy bees (russian hybrids)
and a crop of spring honey would be great
I have been told that it is best to let a strong hive raise a new queen, implying that at least 1 of the existing queens should go to the OB hive. I suppose I could let the nuc raise it's own queen if I make sure it is plenty strong....say6-8 frames? If I do that the combine is more "normal".
But I am intrigued by the ideas behind the cut-down split. And it seemed like this might be a good place to use it, as the colony left in the longhive would not only be freed from it's open brood responsibilities, it would also get the field force from the colony that gets moved out and/or combined. And might be in a great position to work the spring flow.
But if mass casualties are likely there are obviously other options.
I have another hive available to work with, as well as some frames of stores and comb from deadouts so I think there are plenty of choices.
Iddee,
if you combined in that manner would you then go back in and consolidate the brood nest(s) after the dust had settled?