How to create big hives for maximum honey

[Michael Bush]

>We might consider a negative of the hive possibly becoming a laying worker hive before the flow is over?

Like any walk away split or any emergency queen, they will not be broodless long enough.  Queenlessness is not the cause of laying workers.  Broodlessness is.  You also get a brood break which helps with any brood disease as well as Varroa.

https://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm#pheromones

[Ben Framed]

We might consider a negative of the hive possibly becoming a laying worker hive before the flow is over?

What does a laying worker hive look like? - Honey Bee Suite
https://www.honeybeesuite.com/what-does-a-laying-worker-hive-look-like/#:~:text=Without%20going%20into%20detail%2C%20laying,%2C%20suppress%20the%20workers'%20ovaries.

"How long before a queenless hive becomes a laying worker?
Roughly 'three' weeks.
Laying workers begin to show up roughly three weeks after a colony has gone queenless. Pheromones from open brood, and to some extent from the queen herself, suppress the workers' ovaries."

Michael Bush
Like any walk away split or any emergency queen, they will not be broodless long enough.  Queenlessness is not the cause of laying workers.  Broodlessness is.  You also get a brood break which helps with any brood disease as well as Varroa.

Thanks for straightening that out Michael...

Phillip

[Ben Framed]

New question, How long before a bloodless, queenless hive will become a laying worker hive?

Phillip

[Michael Bush]

I don't think it's that simple.  But 3 weeks broodless might be the minimum.  Some are queenless for quite some time before they go laying worker.  Besides that it is a matter of degree.  Early stages of laying workers are hard to spot unless you have some experience with it. Running a couple of hundred mating nucs for the last few decades I've seen a lot of them.  But early stages are easily fixed.  Later stages are the problem.  By then half the bees or more are laying workers.

[Ben Framed]

Thank you for your answers to my questions Michael. The flow in my area goes longer than 3 weeks, I?m not sure how long a worker bee lives during the main flow. I?ve read different opinions. No doubt the force will be steadily dwindling, becoming  smaller and smaller with each passing day. My concerns are I might run out of a good solid force of workers, or even wind up on the border line of a possible LW situation in my area before the flow is kaput . Though interesting, I am beginning to wonder if this method would be efficient for my location 🤷🏻‍♂️.


Phillip

[Michael Bush]

The bees are just queenless long enough to raise their own queen.  I has nothing to do with the length of the flow.  The fact is that all those nurse bees that got recruited to forage are still foraging six weeks later.

[Ben Framed]

I was not clear on how this works exactly. I was under the assumption that the queens were taken away and perhaps banked or set aside, allowing the same queens be later re-introduced or combined back to the hives 'after' the flow was past. After going back and rereading the entire thread I have been completely out int left field.. Thanks for your patience. Your revelation of allowing the bees to produce a new queen makes all my above questions mute.

From the outside looking in, I see no substantial advantage to this system, sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul if we not only remove the queen but take away brood also as in a split which will reduce the needed workforce of this hive during the flow.

Phillip

[Michael Bush]

No queen is confined at all.  She is removed to a new colony

Details:
https://bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#cutdown

Advantages:
1) the old colony will make more honey than it would have because it will have a larger field force and low overhead (no brood to take care of).
2) the new colony gives you increase.  You now have another hive.  i.e. you get more bees and more honey
3) the old colony gets a new young queen.
4) the old colony gets a brood break which is good for brood diseases and good for Varroa management.
5) the bees are crowded up into the supers, which helps production but especially helps with comb honey.
6) a high density of bees will produce more honey than the same number of bees with lower density.  You get a high density of bees.  High density of bees also helps with SHB, wax moths, Varroa, any brood disease etc.
7) bees focus on one main goal at a time and this forces them into moving into foraging (main flow) mode from build up mode.  You cannot build up when you are queenless, so they go into foraging mode early and skip swarm mode.

This is a win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win situation.  There is no tradeoff.  You get more bees and more honey and healthier bees.

But you need to understand that timing is everything and this only works on a strong colony.

[beehappy1950]

I am quite a ways north of most of you. Not sure about removing my queen on a good hive. My bees seem to want to start with a laying worker and I get more drones. You guys dont have this problem?

[Michael Bush]

>You guys dont have this problem?

It's a good idea to check to make sure the new queen gets mated.  If you raise some queens anyway you'll have some spares.  Also, if you WANT to raise some queens, you can go into the old hive 9 days after the split and steal some queen cells and put them in some mating nucs (or use them to set up some).  You don't need a lot of them for just insurance.  One or two spares will be enough to ensure a new queen.  Plus if they end up queenless, the old queen is still in the new colony, so you could always recombine them.

Back to the above discussion on field force:
Another thing to keep in mind, the old hive has all the capped brood and this will continue to emerge for another 12 days after the split, and the little open brood (there is always some), will continue to emerge for the next three weeks and all of these are available to the old hive for the six weeks after they emerge.

[Ben Framed]

No queen is confined at all.  She is removed to a new colony

Details:
https://bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#cutdown

Advantages:
1) the old colony will make more honey than it would have because it will have a larger field force and low overhead (no brood to take care of).
2) the new colony gives you increase.  You now have another hive.  i.e. you get more bees and more honey
3) the old colony gets a new young queen.
4) the old colony gets a brood break which is good for brood diseases and good for Varroa management.
5) the bees are crowded up into the supers, which helps production but especially helps with comb honey.
6) a high density of bees will produce more honey than the same number of bees with lower density.  You get a high density of bees.  High density of bees also helps with SHB, wax moths, Varroa, any brood disease etc.
7) bees focus on one main goal at a time and this forces them into moving into foraging (main flow) mode from build up mode.  You cannot build up when you are queenless, so they go into foraging mode early and skip swarm mode.

This is a win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win situation.  There is no tradeoff.  You get more bees and more honey and healthier bees.

But you need to understand that timing is everything and this only works on a strong colony.

Thanks, I 'now' finally see you point concerning the benefit of maximum honey production. I had to go back and look closely to make sure your were taking about moving the queen only leaving all resources, as similar to Reagans' supersedure case. I was slow on this one. lol

[Michael Bush]

Actually I leave no stores for the old hive.  The stores all go to the new hive which is not expected to make a honey crop  The old hive only has whatever might be on the capped brood combs.  The old hive gets all the mostly capped combs.  Anything else is incidental just to finish filling a box.

[Ben Framed]

Actually I leave no stores for the old hive.  The stores all go to the new hive which is not expected to make a honey crop  The old hive only has whatever might be on the capped brood combs.  The old hive gets all the mostly capped combs.  Anything else is incidental just to finish filling a box.

Under normal circumstances the newly 'hatched or emerged' (I hear it both ways), clean cells for the first couple of days. From age 3 to 11, they babysit the larvae, age 12 to 17 days, they build cells and store nectar and pollen. From 18 to 21 days, they guard the hive. And at 22 to 42 days (which is usually the end of their life), they forage.

Under these very unusual set of circumstances, when do newly emerged bees 'actually' 'begin' forging? 

[The15thMember]

Actually I leave no stores for the old hive.  The stores all go to the new hive which is not expected to make a honey crop  The old hive only has whatever might be on the capped brood combs.  The old hive gets all the mostly capped combs.  Anything else is incidental just to finish filling a box.

Under normal circumstances the newly 'hatched or emerged' (I hear it both ways), clean cells for the first couple of days. From age 3 to 11, they babysit the larvae, age 12 to 17 days, they build cells and store nectar and pollen. From 18 to 21 days, they guard the hive. And at 22 to 42 days (which is usually the end of their life), they forage.

Under these very unusual set of circumstances, when do newly emerged bees 'actually' 'begin' forging? 

My understanding is that in a broodless or only capped brood colony, the new bees would skip the babysitting nurse bee stage and would move right into building and storing duties.  Obviously all those numbers are averages, and the ages vary greatly colony to colony and bee to bee, but essentially it bumps their first foraging flight up by about a week.  And of course if there is an excess of bees doing one job, which there probably will be in this scenario, then everyone will move through the job stages faster.  So if you have all the bees aging into building and storage, but there is a surplus of this age bee, some of them will go right to guard duty, which will free up guard bees to start foraging early than would be normal.  So on the whole, most of the bees are on a faster track to forager than in a brooding colony. 

[Michael Bush]

>Under these very unusual set of circumstances, when do newly emerged bees 'actually' 'begin' forging? 

Probably 10 days... as soon as they can fly.  As Jay Smith said, "When ten days old it can do anything required."

[Ben Framed]

Thank you both.

Phillip

[Ben Framed]

I am quite a ways north of most of you. Not sure about removing my queen on a good hive. My bees seem to want to start with a laying worker and I get more drones. You guys dont have this problem?

This was 'one' of my original concerns considering this system. I suppose this system has been tried and tested, but I am still finding it hard to bite the hook lol.... I do appreciate the patience Michale Bush and the rest of you have had with my questions on this topic, (Bob Wilsons' topic).  Thank you Bob.

Phillip

[Ben Framed]

https://www.honeybeesuite.com/how-to-make-a-cut-down-split-2/


comb honey production - honey bee management - how to - making increase - queen rearing
How to make a cut-down split
by Rusty Burlew 2 years ago

A cut-down split is a special technique often used by comb honey producers. The purpose of a cut-down split is to maximize the number of foragers that are bringing in nectar by minimizing the amount of brood a colony has to care for.

With little brood to feed, foragers concentrate on bringing home nectar rather than pollen, and nurse bees without brood responsibility soon become foragers as well. The result is lots of honey in a short period of time.

Timing of a cut-down split it important. To be effective, the cut-down should be completed just before the start of a main nectar flow. No matter how well you organize the split, it won't produce more honey if there is no nectar to collect.

To make a cut-down split:

Find the queen.
Place the queen and nearly all the open brood, honey, and pollen in a new hive. Make sure these frames are covered with nurse bees to care for the open brood.
Leave the capped brood, one frame of eggs, and a small amount of honey and pollen in the old hive. At the same time reduce the number of brood boxes in this old hive by one and add empty honey supers. (So if there were three brood boxes, cut back to two. If there were two brood boxes, cut back to one. Add supers after cutting back the brood boxes.)
Place the new hive in a different location so all of the foragers return to the old hive.
I know this is confusing, so try this:

[attachment=0][/attachment]


After you are set up, this is what happens:

The old hive won't swarm because it doesn't have a queen or young brood.  The colony will raise a new queen from the eggs, but by the time the colony is strong, swarm season will be mostly over.
o   This old hive has many more foragers and nurses than are needed to care for the one frame of eggs. In addition, all the capped brood will soon hatch and replace the nurse bees.

o   Because the hive is now crowded (due to the reduced number of brood boxes) many of the newly hatched nurse bees will move into the supers and start building comb-even in comb honey supers.

o   The old nurse bees will also become foragers, but since there is little brood to care for, pollen needs will be low. So the huge crop of foragers will collect nectar like crazy and make a lot of honey in a very short time-which they will store in the newly built comb.

The new hive won't swarm because there are no foragers. It will take several weeks to build up a foraging force.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

comb honey cut-down split making increase splits

[beesnweeds]

Though interesting, I am beginning to wonder if this method would be efficient for my location 🤷🏻‍♂️.

Thats my biggest issue.  I had mixed results with cut downs or removing the queen, especially with only 20 or 30 hives. If my little apiary was next to 100 acres of canola it would be another story.  Timing is almost impossible in my area, if I pull the queen and I missed the flow by a week followed by a week of rain colonies may struggle so that when a flow does start they wont produce as much if I hadn't cut them down .  Another issue is queenless foragers tend to drift to queen rite colonies. 

Run 2 colonies side by side. One with a cut down (or queen removed) and the other with the queen placed on top of the supers letting the hive below raise a queen.  I would bet my honey on which one will produce better for you :)

[beehappy1950]

I may have to try this here in Minnesota. Sounds good. I may be able to depend on the basswood flow if the thrips dont get them like last year.