Mailing list for the Person County Beekeepers Association, Roxboro, NC

[Randall Austin <s.randall.austin AT gmail.com>]

To make a walk-away split, do 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.)

At this time of year, it is likely that #2 is the limiting factor. But if you've got both of those 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.

Does this help at all?

Randall Austin

On 2/23/2017 11:26 AM, Mary Rich via Person_County_Beekeepers_Association wrote:

A028609D-5267-4DAC-A2B0-9125056F891F AT yahoo.com" type="cite">

Thank you for asking this question. I was thinking the same thing!!! 

Mary Ann Rich

On Feb 23, 2017, at 11:20 AM, paul childers <cpc3298 AT gmail.com> wrote:

All,

With all the warm weather and bee activity these past couple of weeks, would it be feasible to make a walk away split in late Feb or is it just too early and I need to calm down?  The weather forecast is for more warm weather and my bee hives still have plenty of honey stores. 

Paul
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