You can’t go wrong with those ratios, however once you get more experience, you wont worry about the ratios. You’ll be more in tune with what’s happening in the district by way of available forage in the present & the coming weeks.
I don’t believe that nurse bees make good defenders. If you are dealing with hive beetles, my advice is to take the split far enough away so that the adult bees (the main defenders) stay with the split and don’t return to the parent hive.
One thing my first mentor told me was that a strong colony will make a better queen than a weak colony. With that in mind, I let a strong colony make all the queen cells, after the cells are formed, then break it down into smaller colonies.
This was my experience with my first spring split (and only) - I’m not really atuned to anything… yet . But my observation was the new nuc needed enough stores to get through the period before the new brood emerge. Once the nuc has enough bees to forage/ guard, and provided there is enough nectar around, they will be self sufficient.
I believe with 2-3 frame nucs, you’ll need to be prepared to add/swap frames out to boost the colony strength.
That, Sir is an excellent idea. My apiary is at a friend’s farm which is far away enough from my house, next time I will take the splits away with me so the foragers stay with the spits.
Problem then is how to transport the queen cells from cell builder colony to splits without getting chilled? I guess time to buy an incubator and perhaps a truck
That’s exactly what I did, combined a few frames from 5 different hives while spraying them with sugar water in hope they don’t fight, still lost more bees than I’d like, next time I’ll smoke them as well
They built up 9 out of 12 grafts which I was very happy with. Then I split the cells into the splits with candy in cages
Apart from the one I lost to SHB, the others seem to be doing ok.
I inspected the hives around 1 or 2 days after hatching, I think that was a mistake because I noticed a ball of bees on one of the split’s entrance. That voice inside was telling me they were killing a queen because I opened the hives too early after introducing the queens.
Sure enough, there was a dead queen. Lucky I had a couple of spare queens
Though I don’t know if it was the stress of opening the hive that drove them to killing the queen (happened to me before and I didn’t learn) OR the queen was confused and tried to enter the wrong hive? But then she shouldn’t have been flying being just a couple of days old?
Still a noob
Next time I won’t open the splits until I’m expecting to see eggs being laid (30 days)
Hi @RaniK. Truck mounted incubator is the best , but meanwhile it is still possible to use old style inner pocket transportation method where cells are kept close to the body. Temperature is almost ideal, provided there is some insulation from outside extremes.
Hi Ranik, I frequently combine frames of brood with bees from different colonies with no problems at all without smoke or water spray. All you need to do is mix equal numbers of frames from each hive. For example 2 frames from 3 hives. In that case I arrange the frames: 1,2,1,2,1,2. That way they never fight. I put little spacers between the frames then wedge them tight before moving them to avoid any brood damage during transport & handling. It’s important to do that in order to avoid any beetle damage.
That’s a great idea mate, made me think of wearing a back brace across the chest and tucking the cell cages in there.
Which incubators do you guys recommend?
Hi Jeff, wanted to clarify, do you keep both frames from each hive together?
For example, frames 1 and 2 from hive 1 side by side, then frames 1 and 2 from hive 2 next to them?
Or do you checkerboard them?
Hi Rani, just to clarify, the example is 3 frames from hive #1 & 3 frames from hive #2. Therefore the 1st frame is from #1 hive, the second frame is from #2 hive, the 3rd frame is from #1 hive again & so on.
What I do in that case is take 3 frames from the 1st hive, place them in the brood box, leaving a large gap between each frame. When I get to the second hive, I take 3 frames, then fill in the gaps, closing them up as I go. I have some frames made out of 1/4’ round steel in the shape of the outline of a bee frame. I place one of those between each frame, before jamming everything tight so that no brood gets damaged on the journey.
. But my observation was the new nuc needed enough stores to get through the period before the new brood emerge. Once the nuc has enough bees to forage/ guard, and provided there is enough nectar around, they will be self sufficient.
, but meanwhile it is still possible to use old style inner pocket transportation method where cells are kept close to the body. Temperature is almost ideal, provided there is some insulation from outside extremes.