This video is one of many videos in my online beekeeping course to help you better understand how to keep bees. Learn more at beekeepingmadesimple.com!
Finally, a systematic approach with true clarity on how to perform a split. Thank you for taking the time to create this video. Additionally, your written cards are screenshot keepers!
Glad it was helpful! I want to make sure people really stop and listen to some of the important tips. I don't know about you, but when I'm on youtube, I'm often doing something else while also watching a video :p
Larissa, I am a bee keeper newbie. I’ve watched many other bee keeping channels including some of the most popular and knowledgeable but they don’t compare to how clear and completely you cover topics and you know just as much as they do, despite their years of experience. In your FAQ part of the video it’s like you are reading my mind and know exactly the questions I have. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience with us. I look forward to watching many more of your videos.
Thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to write that comment. It made my day! I'm glad the FAQ section helps. When I was starting out, I'd watch a video and end up with 5 questions that were never answered. Nowadays, it's helpful having my students ask me questions because I can include those in the video, but feel free to ask more questions in the comments!
Larissa, you’re a great teacher. Your videos are very clear. I’m a new-bee (1st bees 3 days ago), and your channel is my favourite. And I’m looking hard. It deserves many more subscribers. Thanks from Western Australia … also where it’s always warm.
Hi I am new to beekeeping and legally lind I have one top bar 28 bars and almost full I live in Victoria Australia we ate in autumn plan to split into a new top bar hive which I have just finished I want to thank you for your consice. Video on the subjects thanks again KEITH
Thank you very moch for these videos i really like the clear and consise explanations of the different processes (altough i know that there are really no clear defenite answers when it comes to beekeeping,,but it helps me alot to figure out a plan that works for my area and bees
You're welcome. I'm glad you found it helpful. I hope your splits do well. If your splits end up with queen troubles, check out my what to do when you have a queen cell in your hive video. There's a PDF to download to help you figure things out.
Thank you so much for your time. I've just learned at least two or three new things from you that will help me get improve. Ta! Beekeeper from Vanuatu.
Hi Larissa good stuff still no sign of the shb this year for me we’re right on track tho honey flow still coming in SE Michigan hope you had a wonderful weekend ✌️
Thank you Larissa. I am a new subscriber but I love the clear way you teach. Is your upper brood box a medium? Or is the video making it look that way? That is how I keep bees with a deep bottom and medium upper. When splitting I can only use the upper for shake bees correct? It looks like you placed a medium frame in the lower deep for the split but that does'nt seem like what you would do so just making sure. Your upper looked very empty near the end of the video but adding to many empty frames sounded like a not to do. Also I love the foundationless frames idea. Any problems with them in the brood box? I have only tried in the mediums with a paint paddle top to guide the comb building so not to connect the frames as they build. I plan to look at your other videos next. This was my first.
Thanks for subscribing! I run my hives with just one deep and all shallows above that. It's a common way to do things in warm climates. I do put shallow frames in my deep box and it's just fine! You can't put a medium or shallow frame in a deep if it's the second box on your hive. The bees will build comb off the frame and connect it to the frames in the box below, but if the medium frame is going in a deep box and below that box is your bottom board, the bees will not attach comb to the bottom board. Sometimes bees build a few inches of comb below the bottom bar of the frame and sometimes they don't. A plus side to doing this is that it gives the first box of the hive a little bit extra space under the frames which I think can help prevent swarming and overcrowding in the hive. I put a lot of brood in my splits. I add at least 4 frames, but sometimes more. I also like to not use foundation in my brood boxes. I believe letting the bees build cells whatever size they choose helps control varroa. Cells sizes are often smaller and more drone comb is built and both of these things can help the bees manage their varroa population.
So helpful to know, thank you so much. Really glad I found you. I'm in warm Florida... Do you use foundation in your honey supers? and if not how to you take honey? @@BeekeepingMadeSimple
Thank you so much! I’m an older yet new bee keeper in a four season climate. My hives are still showing life on the unusual warm temp days so far this winter. Noting that one has evidence of diarrhea I’m fearful of loosing the hive. Would appreciate your comments. Thank you kindly. Cg
@@BeekeepingMadeSimple thank you for your response. What I’m seeing at the top entrance of the hive, is on unusual warm days during the winter spell bees leave to excrete and void. There’s a growing collection of an orange-ish brown building on the box around the entrance. It appears in small dripsoutside the box. You mentioned Nosema, I will look that up. You have a better understanding. Thanks for your response.
I love your videos! Not a beekeeper, but I thought Rural areas of the Hawaiian Islands had problems with rats. Do you have to contend with this problem? If so, what is your solution?
Great video, well done and understandable, Thank you. I am thinking about getting into Bee Keeping as a hobby only. Maybe max 2-3 hives. So after I have split once and say I have 2 hives... how can I keep them stable and not swarm without splitting again and again? (sorry if this is a silly question)
A lot of people ask this question and there's no good answer for it. Unfortunately, it's not ideal to keep bees if you want 3 hives, max. The reason is because you want your bees to be healthy and gather lots of food. But when this happens, they will want to swarm and the only way to prevent swarming is by taking out some brood and giving them space. Where does the brood go? You can sell it, give it away or make splits with it. Splits lead to more beehives. If your bees don't need to be split, this means they're not doing as well as they should and not something you should strive for. If you don't split your bees, and they are doing well, they will swarm and go where ever they like which might be somewhere unwanted. It's not the worst thing in the world if your bees swarm. It is what wild hives do all the time. But if you're in a residential area, it's not nice to your neighbors. My best suggestion for you is that if you happen to have 3 hives and need to split them in order to prevent swarming, to contact the local bee clubs and offer up free bees to their members, or charge a small fee. You're not necessarily selling bees like you're a commercial apiary, but you are giving brood to people whose hives desperately need it and you never know, one year, you might lose all your hives and the people you donated bees to might be able to help you out when you need it.
@@BeekeepingMadeSimple Thank you. I will see how it goes and if it is not as time consuming as I feared then I may get more hives as they dictate. I have plenty of citrus groves around us, but I work full time and was concerned it would take too much time. If not, then your idea of splitting and giving to a local Club or friend that might be interested in starting up an apiary is a great idea. Thank you again for your detailed but easy to understand videos and for you kind response. Warmest regards.
I like the video. But I have a question. An empty frame is placed in the middle after one honey frame and 2 brood frames in the existing bee hive? Then, another empty frame after one brood frame?
Hi Larissa and thanks so much for this great video. I have overwintered my only colony on two deep brood boxes. It's still cold here with temperatures below 10°C and the bees are being treated with Apivar (will come off early May). I am in UK in zone 8a. I want to split the two deep boxes but need them to stay in the same position. Can I turn the entrance of the new split 45° to allow for the colony to return to the same box rather then going back to the original box with existing queen?
Thanks for this video. A question though. When you start a new split that will remain in the same apiary as the original colony should you close off the entrance for some time after creating the split? And if so for how long? Thanks!
You do not want to close off the entrance. If you do that, the bees won't be able to leave. They have to leave the hive for cleansing flights or they can get nosema. To prevent drift (bees flying back to the original hive), put the queen in the split and put a new queen in the original hive OR let the original hive make a new queen. This also lets the original hive think they swarmed and will prevent them from swarming later on.
Thank you. I’m terrible at finding queens. I think I just have poor eyesight. So I’m trying to make a plan to split my hives that allows me to work around that limitation. Thanks for the reply. Very helpful.
Good video this was good. I watched the last video u did and in your last video u talked about hive beetles, and the towels, can u get the dine a max towels that you were using for beetles from the groccie store are they the same. thanks have a blessed week.
Thank you! It's hard to find those brawny dine-a-maw towels. I bought them in a box from amazon over 5 years ago. You cannot use the brawny towels from the store. I tried and the bees chewed it up and left it outside the hive like a bunch of confetti. They did the same with other types of shop towels. Here's a link to a beekeeping supply site that sells them - dancingbeeequipment.com/products/brawny-dine-a-max-beetle-towel-box-of-100 Many people use the unscented swiffer sheets because you can get them at the local store. Most beekeeping supply sites also sell the same towel but they just call it a beetle towel, like these - www.mannlakeltd.com/feeding-medications/beetle-towels/
Most of the mites in the hive are in the cells with pupating bees. They are there laying eggs and those eggs are hatching, mating, laying their own eggs and so on. Without the brood, varroa mites can't reproduce in your hive! The problem is that bees take weeks to go from egg to hatching and that's a long time to go without a queen laying.
1 deep brood box, 1 medium brood box then what I thought was a honey super but found 3 frames of brood one was drone which I removed and froze but thinking the queen would be newly up there. Im in Florida today 70 partly cloudy as I am attempting the split. Examined every frame, the bees where furious but still decent laying, food , eggs mostly in the upper brood medium, two unfilled queen cups. Very little and spotty 2 frames of brood in the deep, minimal food so plenty of room for laying. After too long in the hive I choked because I could not find the queen. Available brood, eggs, food were all on medium frames and the split box I had set up was a deep. I think moving the queen cups, eggs and food and bees (are packed)might have been the reverse to finding the queen you mention to make a split and just having extra space below the medium frames added would work? Instead in my choking for what to do I added a honey super(used some comb from freezer, I don;t feed but frozen honey saved) because we seem to be in a nectar flow already by the look of the hive. I was concerned they were going to swarm was why I wanted to split. They are such resistant bees and are my only hive as of last summer. Because the lower deep was not filled with brood they probably were not going to? Why was the deep brood chamber almost void of brood but new comb and cleaning was going on by tons of bees? May I do just your mentor part for another fee? I am in year six or so backyard keeping but still feel like I know nothing sometimes. Really had your plan but......
I sometimes see the bees abandon the lowest box of the hive. There might be moisture building up down there or mold. Or the frames might be older and the bees don't want to use them anymore. Sometimes I forget to replace the oil in the small hive beetles traps under the screened bottom and I think that causes them to abandon the lower box. You might not ever know why they abandoned the box, but it happens and what I do is reconfigure the hive, so that the frames from the lower box that are empty get taken out of the hive and the frames with brood on them get put together in the lowest box along with 2 frames of honey and a frame of pollen if you have one. Then put the rest of the brood and honey in the second brood box and the honey box up above that if you have it. Since it's 70s right now in the daytime and spring is coming, you can put some empty frames in both brood boxes, especially the first one. I would put 2-3 empty frames in each brood box. I have been thinking about creating just the mentorship program, but isn't something I offer at the moment. You can sign up for the class and watch the first 3 chapters for free the first month. After that it's just $19 for the next month and that will allow you to watch almost the entire course and includes mentorship so you can email me directly with questions.
I don’t even look for the queen, I just make sure both hives have eggs in them. I go back after a week and look for the one that has developed queen cells. Walla.
I address this in the video. When you do this, you're not giving your split the best resources to produce a new queen. The frame with eggs on it , most likely, is going to be the frame with the queen on it. But the hive that doesn't have the queen is the one that needs all the eggs! So this queenless hive is going to make a queen from older eggs or young larvae which is not ideal. This can be a back up plan for someone who cannot find their queen and really needs to split their hive that day, but for most beekeepers I recommend finding your queen and putting her in the split along with some nurse bees and frames of empty comb so she has somewhere to lay. And make sure the hive that does not have a queen in it has ample eggs and pollen and young brood because they won't have a laying queen for awhile which means their population is going to decrease fast. I just don't see the benefit to the lazy man's split. Why not take the extra 10 minutes to give them the best chances of survival and thriving?
I love local beekeepers, but have a strong doubt,s about mega industrial sugar honey converters, and make this intelligent super insect like a bio farm chicken,so good luck.
I’m getting my first package March 16th. Just curious,if I only want to manage two hives how do you keep that manageable? I’m assuming by adding extra boxes would temporarily be ok, but at some point it sounds like the bees will be overcrowded and want to leave. So, back to my question, would I just let nature take its course and start over when the original hive decides to leave or the queen dies? Thanks so much.
Ideally as a beekeeper you let the bees continue to split and reproduce. the beekeeper isn't helping the bee population if you don't allow them to do this. The queen does lay eggs, but since a single bee cannot survive on its own, hives need to split in order for bees reproduce and the bee population to increase. That aside, you are right, you cannot keep bees from swarming by adding boxes. You need room in the brood nest. In order to do that, you need to remove frames of brood and put them in another hive that is weaker or make a new hive. If you let nature take its course, the hive will swarm and half the bees will take off and you will be left with some bees and queen cells. If the hive is not healthy or in a location that does not have adequate food for them, then they will not grow to the size where they would want to swarm and this won't be a problem and yes you would start over when the hive collapses. A hive can produce a new queen if your queen dies. However, a hive that doesn't swarm or want to swarm is not something you should shoot for. It means your bees are struggling in some way.
I split hives in the spring and early summer as needed to prevent swarming, but I split most of my hives to increase my apiary in October/November when the honey season is over but the bees are still out and about. The next big nectar flow doesn't start until February so the hives have time to build back and it doesn't hurt honey production.
They can be right next to each other. However, you want to do two things - 1) put the queen in the new hive, don't keep her in the original hive. 2) shake extra bees into the new hive to account for some drift (bees going back to the original hive)
If your still feeding to make foundation frames into comb frames ,when you make more splits do you still need ? Have to use frame of food even though your feeding ?
I don't feed my bees. The apiary I worked for didn't feed their bees and it was how I was taught beekeeping. If the bees have at least 2 frames of honey for every 4 frames of brood, there is no need to feed. Syrup can help encourage the queen to lay more, but it's by no means necessary nor is it healthy for them to eat sugar syrup.
Hey Larissa, Thank you so much for the incredible information. This may not be possible but I have seen it on other RU-vids: is there a way to “rewind” 10 seconds? It helps me to in grain it in my brain if I have it repeated. Sorry I am not the computer geek I want to be. Thanks
Hmm good question. I was looking around and I don't see the option to rewind 10 seconds on my computer on anyone's youtube video. Maybe it is an option when viewing youtube videos on your phone through the youtube app versus the desktop version of youtube?
Hi, I need to research sections of the videos too. I use a Kindle or my phone and while the video is playing a red !INE no ex from left to right at the bottom of the screen. I can move that red line back to the left to research portions of the video as I take notes. I hope that makes to you.
I'm a first time beekeeper one day I did an inspection and there was a second queen in there my son and I split the hive then the one queen died. I have now noticed the original queen is tending to both hives. Any info would be great. I probably would not have half the learning ability but I just stumbled on your video and was like oh huh duh.
It's common to see two queens in a hive for a short period of time. Usually one is about to leave with the swarm, but if the queen is old or not productive, the hive could just be requeening themselves. Sometimes the weather is just bad for a bit and the swarm process gets put off for a few days and then there's 2 queens for a bit. I don't think it's possible for the queen to be tending to two hives at the same time. There must be a different queen in each hive. They might look similar and act similar, but queen bees only leave their hive by themselves once in their life and it is to mate after they first hatch. After that, the bees will follow her wherever she goes.
Some foragers will go back to the original hive, but most won't. If you split a hive as I explain in the video, then the queen is in the split and many foragers will stay where their queen is. It is important to shake as many frames of capped brood as you can into the split so that the box is completely full of bees (overflowing even) to account for foragers going back to the original hive (drift as they call it).
Whatever weather you're most comfortable working in, I suppose. I usually don't have a choice. My hives are in a few locations and I get 1-2 days a week to run out to all of them so I will split a hive in the heat of a summer afternoon or in the rain. I wouldn't split if it's cooler out (below 70F) or if it's really raining out just so that the brood isn't getting too cold while everything is out especially if it's your first time and will take awhile to get it all done.
My suit is about 10 years old, but I think it's from Mann Lake. It is huge on me. It's a size small. Big and baggy is good for a bee suit. You don't want it fitting well.
I do not remove the cork when introducing a caged queen to a hive. I think it leads to a lot of queens being released prematurely and then getting killed. I prefer to manually release her once I see that she has been accepted by the colony. I've never heard of someone putting the cage in horizontally, but if it works for you, keep doing it that way.
The bees will make queen cells if there is young larva or eggs to turn into a queen and if there is no queen present in the hive. The presence of drones does not affect the production of queen cells.
My hives have just 1 deep box on them and the rest of the boxes are shallows, so when I make a split, sometimes there's a shallow frame going in the deep box. I set up my beehives this way because I don't like to lift heavy boxes and that second box o the hive is usually half full of honey and gets heavy.
Hello ma'am, good day, from Philippines do you have a company? I'm interested to apply as a bee keeper or apiary? Thank you for replying and God bless 🙏🙏🙏
Hit pause! Some people don't need the text, so I figure, if you need the wording, hit pause and take as long as you need to read it. If you don't need the wording, then you're not getting bored with the slides.
I don’t even look for the queen, I just make sure both hives have eggs in them. I go back after a week and look for the one that has developed queen cells. Walla.
