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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Walter Starks <walterstarks AT icloud.com>
  • To: Rob Zelt <robzelt AT robzelt.com>
  • Cc: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>, "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Splits
  • Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2017 10:31:43 -0500

I was in some of my hives yesterday doing some cleaning. One hive that I thought I would lose has re-queened. Saw a cell where the queen emerged and two that had been opened. The new queen is laying. We'll see what happens there.

All my other hives have lots of drone brood and some adult drones. The queens in most of the hives have already moved back down to the lower deep. All hives have quit a bit of nectar/pollen. No signs of swarm cells yet though.

Haven't done a sugar shake yet. Probably in the next 2 or 3 weeks. I expect mite levels will probably be higher than normal since there wasn't much of a brood break on some of my hives. Two had candy boards on them because of low stores last fall, so those queens likely never completely stopped laying. Three more had sugar boards, so they may have gotten a short brood break. Probably not for long though. It's been so warm that I think there has probably been a fairly steady supply of pollen available for the foragers.

______

Walter


You never can tell with bees. ~ Winnie-the-Pooh

On Feb 26, 2017, at 9:28 AM, Rob Zelt <robzelt AT robzelt.com> wrote:

Randall,


Thanks for the response and article link!


During our inspection Saturday we observed a handful of drones and quite a few drone cells in our hives. Curious to hear what others are seeing in the area. With strong populations and a lot of brood already I think we will be taking action sooner than later, possibly next weekend. 

On a side note, we were surprised at the amount of freshly drawn comb and nectar in the hives. On a number of outer frames, the bees have recently extended old comb and are filling with nectar. We would not have expected to see this in February.

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Thanks again,

Rob





From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2017 6:49 PM
To: Rob Zelt; ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [ocba] Splits
 

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:
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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