Making Splits

We've never done this before on our own.  As relatively new beekeepers we've made our share of mistakes, and we're certain to make more.  We decided to make our own 'walk-away splits' this spring.  A split is where you take a colony of bees, split it, and make two colonies of bees.  It's like compound interest.

Of our four hives we had at the end of last year, we have two left.  One was lost due to wax moths.  The second is a mystery.  Perhaps the queen died?  Perhaps they were a little weak and the cold weather did them in?  Whatever happened, we are told it is a common occurrence.  "If you want a beehive, get two," they say.  Some people lose all their hives, but they catch more swarms and resume.  

Tricia and I put on our suits and unstacked one of the hives we lost.  Here she is cleaning the bottom board.  She'll put that back down as it will serve as the base for one of our splits.

The two remaining hives appeared to be very healthy, and that is a must in order to make splits.  You'll note that we have two deeps with a queen excluder and then medium supers on top.  To make a walkaway split, you simply move one of the deeps and put on top of a bottom board and you're done.  But there's a few things you need to check before doing that.

Despite not feeding our bees, they have plenty of stores of honey in the supers.  This is money in the bank.  Spring has arrived and the bees are bringing in nectar and pollen and will have lots of honey to spare when we pull honey in the summertime!

Capped honey in the supers

Then we got down into the deep boxes.  We used our smoker to calm the bees.  One hive is naturally calm.  The other hive is aggressive and get up in your face.  The first thing you want to see is drones or at least capped drone cells.  The drones are the males and you need males so that when a new queen is made, there will be drones in the area (from your colonies or another) for the virgin queen to mate with.  We went through the boxes and found capped drones.  Good news.  The drone cells are laid on the bottom as their cells are larger and don't fit in the regular foundation.

Now we look for the queen.  In the frame below we found eggs, larvae, and capped brood.  All letting us know that we have a laying queen somewhere.  We flipped the frame over and found her!  Her tail is longer than the others.  She's a little difficult to see, but once you get the hang of it, she kind of stands out.  Good.  So that box with the queen gets moved to a new location.  This is done to fool her into thinking she's swarmed.  That's what we're told, so we did it.

Nurse bees and eggs

The other box must be gone through frame by frame.  The boxes must have at least 3 or 4 frames of eggs and brood and these are positioned in the middle, and then several frames of honey and pollen and drawn comb on the outside.  As long as you have this in both boxes, you should be good.    The box with the queen will continue going as normal (but with half the bees).  Not to worry.  She's laying eggs like crazy and the hive will grow exponentially in size.

The box with no queen...  Well, what happens next is simply amazing.  The bees in the queen-less box will realize there is no queen in about 5 hours.  They will begin to feed royal jelly from a gland in their heads to some larvae and these will make queen cells.  In about 16 days a queen will emerge.  She will get her wits about her and will make her maiden breeding flight where she will fly up to the drone zone and get bred.  She'll return to the hive and begin to lay.

So in the photo below, you'll see that we made two splits.  The bricks on top of the hives denote what's in them.  The bricks laying long-ways (the first and third hives) have a laying queen.  The hives where the bricks are laying cross-ways (the second and fourth hives) have no queen.  We will check both of those boxes in about 3 1/2 weeks to a month.  What we're looking for is eggs.  If we find eggs, we will know that the split was successful.  

You can buy a queen cell and speed up this process, but we opted to let the hive do it themselves.  You lose a little time, but that's okay with us.  Now, we wait...

What happens if the split didn't work?  Well, we'll be disappointed, but we'll stack the boxes on top of the existing healthy hives and we will try to make another split OR we'll try to catch wild swarms in the yard.  We actually got called to go get a swarm in someone's yard last Saturday, but we had company over.  When the company left, we put on our suits and started to go, but the swarm had left!  Oh well.  We'll keep you posted with our first attempt of making splits.

Inspecting The Hives

We have two hives in the side yard.  One of them we call the Jeff Davis hive since we caught the swarm in our backyard here in Jefferson Davis Parish.  The other hive which sits just to the north of the Jeff Davis hive, we call the Allen Parish hive since we caught that swarm out at the farm in Oberlin (Allen Parish).  For a long while we were opening up the boxes several times a week, checking out the growth and health of the colonies.  This hobby is kind of addicting.  Once it gets cold, you are not supposed to open the boxes as the bees work real hard to regulate the temperature in the hives.

The drought this summer was hard on the bees and then a few weeks ago, we had temperatures that plummeting into the low 20's.  We figured it best that we get into the hives and inspect things with a seasoned veteran of beekeeping - our friend.  Tricia invited him over and he brought his smoker and got into both boxes.  Here is what we learned:  The queen moved up vertically rather than horizontally.  That means that she filled up the foundation frames toward the center of the box, but the frames on the outside had not been filled out yet.

Both queens appear to be very strong, though, laying lots of eggs in beautiful patterns.  More on that in a minute.  With spring coming and lots of nectar and pollen soon to be available, we look for both hives to really thrive.  We'll pull honey in July, if all goes according to plan.

The queens in each box are laying lots of eggs and they are in all stages of growth.  In the photo below, the bottom center portion that looks like the sun is capped brood.  These capped brood worker bees take 6 days to hatch.  Just on this one frame, that's a lot of new babies.  The hives are about to explode with activity.  The rainbow portion above the capped brood are eggs that have been laid.  The egg stage lasts for 3 days and then it becomes a larvae.  Those cells will then be capped and will hatch out.  The upper left and right corners are capped honey.

The very bottom of the frame are some cells that are bigger than the cells in which the worker bees' eggs are laid.  These cells are drone cells.  The drones are males.  The males do two things:  They eat and they breed with the queens.  During winter time, the bees don't like the drones eating, so they kill them.  It is a brutal, woman-dominated society.  The drones fly up to the "drone zone" which is approximately 300 feet in the air and meet up with queens and get romantic.  The appearance of drone cells tell you that spring is on the way and love will be in the air.

This frame has a bit more capped honey on the top and both corners.  Honey is heavy.  

This frame is almost completely capped honey.  The comb is capped with wax.

While in both the Jeff Davis and Allen boxes, the queens in each were located.  If you look to the end of the finger, you can see one of the queens.  Here body is a little longer and redder and she has a black, shiny dot on her back.

Since the queens were located in both of the deeps, we added another deep on top to allow for growth and put a queen excluder between the second deep and the super on top of it.  That will keep the queen from going up.  The brood that hatches out of the top will mature and the bees will clean out those cells and fill the supers with honey.  (That's the plan, anyway.)

The bricks on top of the boxes tell a story.  If they are laid long ways like they are, it means that we have seen evidence of a laying queen.  In the next month, we'll be setting swarm traps in the yard AND we'll also attempt to make a split out of each box.  

What that means is you remove a frame of brood, a frame of pollen and honey and put it in another box.  The bees will immediately determine that there is not a queen in the box and will "make a queen."  Once she hatches, makes her virgin flight and is bred in the drone zone, she'll return to begin laying.  At that point the split is successful and you've taken one box of bees and turned them into two.  We can't wait to try it out.  We've successfully caught swarms, but have never made a split.  We'll report back when we try it.

It's the Bees' Knees!

We wanted to check on the progress of the honeybees that we placed in a box after catching a swarm.  Tricia put on the bee suit and I put on the veil and we went out to the box to inspect.  The bees, so far, have been very gentle.  We haven't needed to use the smoker to calm them down.  Once they have honey and lots of brood to protect, things might change.  

I want to show you some photos from our inspection of the hive.  You can see below that the bees are drawing out comb on the foundation.  Slowly, but surely, they are filling up the frame.

This next photo is very interesting as it shows several stages.  First, in many of the cells, you can see a tiny, white thing that looks like a grain of rice.  That's the egg that the queen has laid.  Right in the center of the photo, you can see three cells that have a big white "C-shaped" thing in it.  That's the larva.  Finally, you can see golden-colored capped cells.  The cells that are capped for between 8 and 14.5 days.  This is the pupal stage and at the end of this time, an adult honeybee will emerge.  Queens can lay approximately 1,500 eggs per day, so you can imagine the colony sized begins to increase quickly.  They'll all go to work filling the frames.  You don't want them to run out of space as they can swarm, so we added an additional box with frames on top to allow for growth.

Bees are SO busy.  You can understand why the term "busy as a bee" was coined.  I took a photo of a bee full of pollen as she flies into the box.

Here is a more close up photo.  Note the bright yellow pollen on the back legs of the bee.  She's been working hard to bring pollen back to the growing hive.  We know we have a laying queen as we've witnessed the eggs, larvae and capped brood, and we know the bees are bringing food into the hive.

As I slowly looked at the activity, I was looking for one other thing.

The queen.  Our colony is very small as it wasn't a large swarm.  If I'm going to ever spot the queen, it has to be now, before the growth is exponential.  I spotted her!  If you look at the bottom, right hand corner of the frame and work your way up to the left diagonally, she's the 3rd bee from the bottom.  Do you see her?

She has a longer abdomen (or tail) in comparison to the others.  It has a little red tinge to it.  She also has a more black and shiny dot on her thorax.  Now that I spotted her, I carefully put the frame back in the box and closed the top.

Long live the queen!  We'll let her get back to work.  The flow is about to start as the white dutch clover, privet and (soon) the Chinese tallow tree will be flowering.  We're not sure if we'll get to pull honey this year, but we'd certainly like to.  We're also trying to catch another swarm.  No success yet, but we've seen scout bees checking out the swarm trap.

A Land Flowing With Milk And (Hopefully) Honey

We mentioned in previous posts that we've been attending beekeeping classes.  We've learned a lot, but beekeeping is like learning to ride a bike.  At some point, you've got to stop watching and listening and start doing.  To that end, a friend let us borrow an old box with three frames that he wasn't using.  We put it out on the trampoline.  You can see that a few bees smell the wax that's on the frames and they are flying around, checking things out.  Hopefully, those are scout bees checking out a new piece of real estate and ensuring that this new home has "curb appeal."

To catch a wild swarm, I learned that you should place the box about 10 feet off the ground.  I put in on top of a ladder and used a ratchet strap to tie it down.  I wouldn't want it to blow off in the wind or be knocked off by Belle.  We took a drop or two of Lemongrass essential oil and put it on a cotton ball and put it in the box.  Bees love that scent.  You have to be careful, though.  We learned that while the worker bees love it, the queen does not.  A couple of bees found the box!  Followed by a couple dozen.

We checked out the box in a short while and there were a lot of bees flying around.  We were praying that they had little suitcases with them and were moving in.

I took a short video of them flying around.  You can hear them buzzing and also the rooster crowing in the background...  Click the arrow below to watch.

We checked on the box a little while later.  There weren't as many flying.  Maybe the queen never came?  Maybe they didn't like the box and moved on?  I figured I would check.  I didn't put the full bee suit on, but put on just the veil and gloves.  The plan was that I would remove the ratchet strap, open the top and see if there were any bees in the box.

When I took the lid off, there was a WHOLE BUNCH of bees inside!  I called a friend and he brought another box with 9 frames and a telescoping lid.  Our plan was to take the top off of the box of bees, set the deep box with frames on top of it and lift the bottom box off the bottom board and insert a queen excluder.

The excluder keeps your queen from escaping.  The workers can go where they please, in and out, but the queen can only move between the two boxes, laying eggs and building her colony.

So we went about doing just that.

Soon, we were finished!  We got the excluder on and the box set up just the way we wanted.  

Bees don't fly at night.  We decided to put the bees in the wagon.  As soon as nightfall came, all the bees came 'home' and into the box.  Since none were flying, I pulled the wagon full of bees out to the location where we are placing the hive.  We will set it down on top of some cinder blocks.  We're really excited!  Tomorrow we plan on buying some additional boxes and set out some more swarm traps.  We'd like to catch some more.  We will open the box of bees in a couple of weeks and inspect in order to see if we see eggs/brood.  We will keep you posted.

The Swarm!

Nothing, and I mean nothing, says, "Welcome guests!" like a swarm of angry bees right by your back door!  A few weeks ago I showed you that we have a colony of bees that live in the column that supports the overhang by the side entrance to our house.  Well, last week they were swarming all over the place.  You couldn't even go outside on this side of the house.  The neighbor came and rang the doorbell Saturday morning and never saw them.  We came to the door and didn't want to open it, but gestured frantically to look up.  He did and ran quickly back to his house.  Amazingly, he didn't get stung.

Angry bees

Let's zoom in and take a closer look:



Bee careful!

I actually like having the bees around as they are helping pollinate our fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers.  But I wish they'd move somewhere else.  The photo doesn't do justice to the sheer amount of bees flying around.

Fortunately, I don't have an allergic reaction to bee stings, but they kind of creep me out.  I remember as a kid watching a movie on TV about Killer Bees.  I remember they eventually coerced them into the Superdome in New Orleans, turned down the air conditioner to 45 degrees in the Superdome to immobilize the bees and the crisis was averted.  Well, these aren't killer bees, thankfully.

So what were the bees doing?  Well, according to Wikipedia (Source): There is a time in early Spring where bees swarm.  This swarming is called supercedure.  The queen will lay eggs in queen cups.  The queen larva is fed royal jelly (a protein rich secretion from the heads of young worker bees).  If not fed royal jelly, the queen larva would have become a worker bee.  As a result of eating exclusively royal jelly, the queen develops into a sexually mature female.  Queens have special cells on the hive that are larger and are vertically oriented instead of horizontal.  As the young queen larva pupates, the workers cap the cell with beeswax until the virgin queen chews her way out.

During swarming season, the old queen will likely leave with the prime swarm before the first virgin queen emerges from a queen cell.  This is what I think was happening at our house.  When the young queen emerges, she'll look for all the rival virgin queens and kill them and any unemerged queens.  How nice of her! 

After the main swarm has left, the workers in the colony may prevent virgins from fighting and one or several virgins may go with after-swarms. Other virgins may stay behind with the remnant of the hive. As many as 21 virgin queens have been counted in a single large swarm. When the after-swarm settles into a new home, the virgins will then resume normal behavior and fight to the death until only one remains. If the prime swarm has a virgin queen and the old queen, the old queen will usually be allowed to live. The old queen continues laying. Within a couple of weeks she will die a natural death and the former virgin, now mated, will take her place.  Unlike the worker bees, the queen's stinger is not barbed. The queen can sting repeatedly without dying.

Very interesting.  I learned something.  I learned that I don't want all this violence right outside our door, so-o-o-o...   Last night, when the bee activity calmed down, I snuck (is snuck a word?) up on them and sprayed the big ball of bees with some roach spray as I didn't have any Wasp & Hornet spray on hand.  You can see the carnage below on the sidewalk leading up to the side entrance.


Bee carcasses

Now, before anyone from PETOB (People for the ethical treatment of bees) objects, I didn't kill the beehive in the column - just the swarm that was causing trouble.  There are still bees carrying on as usual, going in and out of the column, not bothering anyone.  For the time being, there is PEACE on our little farm - a land flowing with MILK & HONEY(literally).