Hi and thanks for opportunity to be part of this forum.
I live in Dayboro SE Qld and started bee keeping about 12 months ago.
And of course I have made many rooky mistakes but improving as I continue to access resources like this forum which is gold,
At this stage I have 7 hives, all Italian girls and really calm and good to work with. I am prepared for my first harvest later this week which is looking like around 50kg after a strong start to season from August. Three of my hives are very strong in bee numbers and Honey flow, whilst the others are Strong but younger at about 6months old.
I have been advised that to do splits on the 3 stronger hives would be ok and i would put fertilised queens in them from same apiary I have Purchased all my Nucs. However on doing more reading on this subject I’m not sure it is the right thing to do now especially as it is looking more likely we will have a wet period in January/feb.
Greatly appreciate any advice and direction on this issue please. Regards Rob
Hi Rob, you’ll have to make that decision based on the strength of the colonies. Also what forage is available for the bees going forward. I’m at Buderim & I’m planning on splitting some strong hives in the coming days. My main reasons are to prevent swarming
Thanks Jeff - Resources seem to continue to be strong here and with recent rain a range of euculptus trees have commenced flowering. (I am on the edge of a large Forrest area.
In terms of hive strength I am unsure how to judge this. For example one hive has 2 supers on and is probably 90% full of honey and this occurred between late September and now. With heat here in last week or so around mid 30’s bearding Of bees daily has occurred covering face of the brood and one super. The bee population has been growing strongly from my inexperienced observation,
You’re welcome Rob. I only use single honey supers on my hives. That way it’s easier for me to get into the brood boxes. I went this morning to take honey frames as well as do some splits. I only took honey because the colonies I was going to split didn’t have any drone brood beneath the QE’s. Plus the honey supers were full. I took the honey & replaced them with fresh foundation frames. I’ll do the splits when I’ve got some fully drawn worker comb stickies to replace the brood frames with. My splits will be removing brood frames only, minus the bees. I only had fresh foundation frames this morning, they all got used with replacing honey frames.
One colony that I had replaced all the brood frames 3 times since July had a full box of honey. The first 2 times was brood with bees, the last time was brood minus the bees. That IS one super colony.
PS @RobP, you’ll get lots of different advice in regards to splitting. I can only tell you what I do. I do preemptive swarm control splits early in the Spring where I take brood with bees. Now I’m mainly taking brood minus bees in order to boost weak colonies, plus make sure the strong colonies don’t decide to swarm.
Thanks again Jeff and appreciate the advice. Yes I am understanding the differences in advice and that’s all healthy and flexible.
As a side note I ended up with 2 supers on one colony only because I was starting a short term work contract and had a quick look into bees before this to find one hive had filled it’s super 85% and I could not harvest. So back to one only soon.