I had either an ineffective queen or she was dead and there were emergency queen cells in each of my twp deeps. At the advice of a beekeeping vet from my beekeeping association, I made a split. I was advised to keep the entrance reducers at their smallest openings. Here are my questions, and thanks in advance for your replies....
1.When can I open the entrance reducers? One of the hives has significantly more activity and the traffic at the opening is very heavy. The advice i got about leaving them on the smallest opening was due to the fact that each hive now had less bees in them and the smaller opening made it easier for the colonies to defend themselves. Seems to make perfect sense, but should I open the one reducer since the traffic is so heavy?
2.When should I add a second deep to each hive? There are plenty of bees in each hive and since they were previously one hive, all the frames are already drawn out so the 7 of 10 drawn frames rule of thumb has already passed.
>I had either an ineffective queen or she was dead and there were emergency queen cells in each of my twp deeps. At the advice of a beekeeping vet from my beekeeping association, I made a split.
So you were advised to take a failing hive and split it? Splits work best from successful hives...
> I was advised to keep the entrance reducers at their smallest openings. Here are my questions, and thanks in advance for your replies....
1.When can I open the entrance reducers?
Bees in very strong hives in the wild often have very small openings and they thrive. I wouldn't worry too much about it until you see a major traffic jam.
>One of the hives has significantly more activity and the traffic at the opening is very heavy. The advice i got about leaving them on the smallest opening was due to the fact that each hive now had less bees in them and the smaller opening made it easier for the colonies to defend themselves. Seems to make perfect sense, but should I open the one reducer since the traffic is so heavy?
If traffic isn't backing up, I wouldn't worry about it. If it is, then open it up more.
>2.When should I add a second deep to each hive? There are plenty of bees in each hive and since they were previously one hive, all the frames are already drawn out so the 7 of 10 drawn frames rule of thumb has already passed.
If the bees have occupied all of the current box and they are expanding, I would add a box.
How long ago did you split? Are you sure both splits have laying queens? Was there plenty of various stage brood when you split? Did you split what brood there was evenly among the 2 boxes? I wouldn't be adding any boxes till I was certain they had a queen returned from mating flights and performing. G
And I would not do that for about 30 days to allow her to get established.
Jim