Salamagundy
House Bee
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2011
- Messages
- 159
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Carmarthenshire
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 10
At the last inspection on Sunday my strongest hive (a national) looked like this: super with 9 frames, four new ones now drawn but empty, five old ones filling nicely (albeit with mostly dandelion nectar...); top brood box bees in 11 seams, wall-to-wall brood on 10 frames, two charged queen cells on frame 5, one charged queen cell on frame 6; bottom brood box: bees in 9 seams, brood on 5 frames.
My plan today was to split as follows (but it poured with rain, giving me the chance to come to the forum to ask advice...):
Queen, a frame of brood, a frame of stores and a good number of nurse bees into a dummied-down brood box containing 5 frames in total
Top brood box to stay on the original site with one queen cell and the super.
Bottom brood box (which contains a lot of stores) to another stand with one queen cell.
As the queen is so prolific (to me as a newbie at least) I thought it would be a good idea to try and get three colonies as a way of increasing the overall quality of my stock . I have enough kit at the moment because all the others are so far behind!
I'd be very grateful for any comments or suggestions before I go back again tomorrow.
My plan today was to split as follows (but it poured with rain, giving me the chance to come to the forum to ask advice...):
Queen, a frame of brood, a frame of stores and a good number of nurse bees into a dummied-down brood box containing 5 frames in total
Top brood box to stay on the original site with one queen cell and the super.
Bottom brood box (which contains a lot of stores) to another stand with one queen cell.
As the queen is so prolific (to me as a newbie at least) I thought it would be a good idea to try and get three colonies as a way of increasing the overall quality of my stock . I have enough kit at the moment because all the others are so far behind!
I'd be very grateful for any comments or suggestions before I go back again tomorrow.