OP
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2009
- Messages
- 1,065
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire.
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 9
My first attempt was 2010. Using the AS I moved the brood box (standard national) to one side and put old queen on a frame back on old site. Once queen cells were capped I divided into 3 nucs. 1 nuc did not produce a queen so was united back to original colony. The other 2 nucs produced good queens. I tried again to split original colony to create 1 more colony as this used up all my equipment. The original queen swarmed and left an emergency queen cell. So perhaps a colony doesn't like to be messed about with too much. All nucs were sold leaving me with 1 colony and I managed get 40lb of honey that year.
In 2011 I tried the same method as above but let the queen start laying in a second brood box before the split. When I did the AS there was 9 full frames of brood in the bottom box and 8 half frames in the top. The queens came out fine and looked a lot bigger. All brood boxes were nearly full and some drunken youths turned the hives over. By the time I got to them they had all swarmed apart from 1 who's queen had a damaged wing. It was too late in the year to start raising more queens and there was too many bees for 1 colony, so I bought some imports that I thought would be close to what I had.
In 2012 eventually all queens failed but I had chance to make some new ones using the horsley board. I moved capped queen cells from the chosen colony and managed to get 3 new queens. The only draw back with this method was I wish I'd let the colony's go on to double brood before inserting the board. When I eventually started looking for the queens I found the top box was boiling over with bees so I'm lucky they didn't swarm. I had left the colonys with virgin queens alone as I didn't want to disturb them, but because of this I couldn't inspect the old queens in the bottom boxes. When I did get to the bottom boxes I found the queens had gone off lay and the bees hadn't drawn tthe foundation, perhaps due to the bad weather.
In 2011 I tried the same method as above but let the queen start laying in a second brood box before the split. When I did the AS there was 9 full frames of brood in the bottom box and 8 half frames in the top. The queens came out fine and looked a lot bigger. All brood boxes were nearly full and some drunken youths turned the hives over. By the time I got to them they had all swarmed apart from 1 who's queen had a damaged wing. It was too late in the year to start raising more queens and there was too many bees for 1 colony, so I bought some imports that I thought would be close to what I had.
In 2012 eventually all queens failed but I had chance to make some new ones using the horsley board. I moved capped queen cells from the chosen colony and managed to get 3 new queens. The only draw back with this method was I wish I'd let the colony's go on to double brood before inserting the board. When I eventually started looking for the queens I found the top box was boiling over with bees so I'm lucky they didn't swarm. I had left the colonys with virgin queens alone as I didn't want to disturb them, but because of this I couldn't inspect the old queens in the bottom boxes. When I did get to the bottom boxes I found the queens had gone off lay and the bees hadn't drawn tthe foundation, perhaps due to the bad weather.
