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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Rob Zelt <robzelt AT robzelt.com>, "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Splits
  • Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2017 18:49:51 -0500

Rob,


To make a split, you must have two things above all else:

  1. Lots of bees and brood
  2. Drones in the area to mate with the virgin queen that the split will raise. (You could add a store-bought queen but those won't be available for another 7 weeks.)

#1 is easy to check. For #2, about the only way to easily estimate whether there are drones in the area is to see whether YOUR colonies have drones. It is important to note that YOUR virgin queens will NOT mate with the drones from YOUR bee yard (that is, if everything goes the way it is supposed to), but if YOU have drones, chances are that other colonies in the surrounding area do too. (FYI, the instinctive flight pattern & flight distance is different for drones and queens, so the Grand Plan is for queens to go to Drone Congregation Areas outside the range where drones from the same colony go, thus avoiding inbreeding.)


You actually could go ahead and make a split without seeing mature drones if you see purple-eyed drone pupae, because they should emerge and mature in time to be ready to mate with a virgin queen. But if all you see are drone pupae and no actual drones, I would worry about having enough drones for a virgin to be well mated.


At this time of year, it is likely that #2 is the biggest limiting factor. But if you've got both #1 and #2 covered, you are good to go.


Keep in mind that although we are having warm days lately, we still are having cold nights. If you make splits with a high brood-to-nurse bee ratio and the bees have to cluster tightly at night, they may leave brood outside the cluster "footprint". That brood will chill and die. So we need a large nurse bee-to-brood ratio for early-season splits. That isn't a show-stopper, just something to look out for.


You can also find some helpful tips in the article <here>.


Does this help at all?


Randall


On 2/23/2017 6:11 PM, Rob Zelt wrote:
DM5PR13MB1177C86F2C77683791D6E426B5530 AT DM5PR13MB1177.namprd13.prod.outlook.com" type="cite">
Hi,

Curious to hear peoples opinions/recommendations on the local factors contributing to the timing of performing a hive split? Is soon too soon?

Thanks in advance,

Rob


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