So I just did two snelgrove splits again. Just when they start to put honey in the flowhive. Sure feels like I just blew up my best two hives.
I did the split just before dark so I am hoping the flyers still go back to their old hive in the morning. The other potential issue is I left the flow hives on the artificial swarm thinking they will still bring in honey. Downside is that means some nurse bees were left in the AS. Percentage wise it wasn’t that many.
Hoping to reunite in 10 days.
Though I am sure they are not at full strength but the 2 AS with the flow hives still on them have brought in more honey. I thought they might since they are the foragers. Black locust are about to bloom.
Had a setback due to impatience. Live and learn I guess. I put one of the hives back together too early and they went right back to building queen cells so I just split them again. I thought it also odd that the parent hive with the queen had not torn down the queen cells after 7 days. Despite not being able to find the queen (there are fresh eggs), I merged them anyway. So I moved the queen hive again except this time I did a much better job getting all nurse bees out/off of the AS including the flow hive. I also removed the queen excluder since there is now queen. So the 10 days starts again.
The other hive is going more like text book, though I need to get into them and remerge them since tomorrow is day 11. I did peek in the other day and confirmed the parent hive had torn down all queen cells.
Interesting, I have been keeping the flow hive on the AS hives while I wait to recombine them. They are putting on weight like crazy, 15 pounds in 2 days. My theory was that since the AS is 100% of the flying bees and no nurse bees, other than the one or 2 frames of eggs you give them, they do not have young bees to feed. So this one hive I gave one frame of eggs and 7 new foundation frames no comb, and the flow hive on top with no QX since there is not queen. Very productive.
I have another hive also in the middle of a snelgrove split doing the same thing but I don’t have scales on that one.
So my point is that is seems as though you do not lose harvesting time by doing a snelgrove if you keep the supers on the AS hive. (Artificial swarm)
@Plutoman15 Are you doing this split before queen cells appear as a pre-emptive swarm prevention (hence Snelgrove method 1)?
No, I do them after queen cells are present.
Out of 7-8 different times doing this split, I have only lost 2 swarms but the one is because I totally did the split wrong. So really only one lost swarm.
Have you used this method to split for a new colony?
I am interested in using method 1 as a preemptive swarm prevention at the same creating a new colony.
I only do a temporary split. I have 5 hives and do not want any more. Already more work than I have time for.
Joe
