I am in coastal central Queensland, lots of bush in flower here at the moment mostly messmates,I think.
After lots and lots of reading posts here about one or two brood boxes, yesterday I decided to take my two brood box and one super hive and split it. It is an extremely strong hive. I can never spot the queen so I basically made sure both brood boxes had BIAS and placed the second brood box on a new base and I added a new super. The original hive base and first brood box I put the original super back on top. I was a little pushed for placement space so I placed the hive with the new empty super closest to the original hive position and placed the hive with the 3/4 full super the furthest away but still well within a meter of the original position. Both hives are only about 10cm apart. My theory was the most field bees will likely return to the hive with the empty super with this positioning. Both hives had a lot of bees. Was I being too enthusiastic adding the empty super to the split? Should I check for queen cells in a week or just leave them to it and check in 28 days that both hives have eggs? Hope I didn’t do the wrong thing? Any comments would be greatly appreciated!
Hi Penny, I think your split could work out okay, but I’m not too sure about the empty super - is it a Flow or traditional, any comb etc? Also I’d be inclined to inspect both boxes to make sure they’re recovering well from the changes. Hard to tell how the numbers will be in each box, with the inevitable worker drift and possibly less brood in what used to be the top box.
Hi Eva, thanks so much for your comments. The empty super is a flow. I just went and had a peak inside the side windows of both hives. The empty super has a few bees visible and the original super is packed with bees. From outside observations it looks like the “new” hive has slightly more activity at the entrance than the old hive. Both are very active with coming and going. I will have a peak inside the hives on Sunday (1week after split). If the hive with the new super has dramatically less bees I could remove the super? Thoughts?
Sure thing - yes, removing the super might be best if that box is the queenless one since it’s a lot of space to defend. Keep an eye on both to see if the queenless one needs a frame of BIAS donated along the way.
I think your winters are mild compared to mine, but I don’t know about how constant the nectar flow usually is. If the queen is in there, and local beeks would put a super on a strong, queenright colony at this time of year, your super might have a shot at getting worked.
The added consideration of course is that Fframes need lots of waxing up before they’re ready to hold nectar. If there isn’t much of a flow on now or dearth is around the corner they won’t be able to do much up there.
Thanks Eva all great advice. I will have a look on Sunday and reassess the situation. 