- Joined
- Oct 16, 2012
- Messages
- 18,278
- Reaction score
- 9,632
- Location
- Fareham, Hampshire UK
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 6
Forgot to say ... Don't worry about the entrances - the bees will sort themselves out - you will probably find that they gravitate towards the entrance on the side with the queen in it as they will search out her pheremones. When you do your Artificial Swarm you will need both entrances open anyway ...
I assume you know how to do your A/S in your long hive - your need to separate the queen and the fliers from the brood and eggs with the hive divider.
- give the half with the queen some new frames to work with. Move all the frames of brood and eggs with the bees on them (these will be the nurse bees) to one end of the hive - ideally in the side that they were in. Move the queen and any frames that don't have brood on them to the other side of the divider
and give them a couple of new frames or empty brood frames for the queen to lay in. If there is not a lot of forage about give them a couple of litres of syrup.
Make sure you've found ALL the queen cells and then choose the best one or two (I tend to just keep one queen cell - but the risk is that with only one queen cell you only have the one chance for a new queen) because those are the ones that the bees will mature to queens and knock down all the rest. Those queen cells need to be in the side with the brood frames and you MUST NOT leave any queen cells in the side with the queen or she will swarm. Make sure that both sides have frames of stores then walk away and leave them to it .. the fliers will go back to the queen side and the frames with the queen cells on will mature and hopefully you will get a nice new queen and you are back to two colonies. If you just want one big colony you can then choose the best queen of the two, kill the other one and combine them back to one big colony.
It's really easy with a Long Deep Hive - no messing about moving boxes about - just have to move the frames and divider.
I assume you know how to do your A/S in your long hive - your need to separate the queen and the fliers from the brood and eggs with the hive divider.
- give the half with the queen some new frames to work with. Move all the frames of brood and eggs with the bees on them (these will be the nurse bees) to one end of the hive - ideally in the side that they were in. Move the queen and any frames that don't have brood on them to the other side of the divider
and give them a couple of new frames or empty brood frames for the queen to lay in. If there is not a lot of forage about give them a couple of litres of syrup.
Make sure you've found ALL the queen cells and then choose the best one or two (I tend to just keep one queen cell - but the risk is that with only one queen cell you only have the one chance for a new queen) because those are the ones that the bees will mature to queens and knock down all the rest. Those queen cells need to be in the side with the brood frames and you MUST NOT leave any queen cells in the side with the queen or she will swarm. Make sure that both sides have frames of stores then walk away and leave them to it .. the fliers will go back to the queen side and the frames with the queen cells on will mature and hopefully you will get a nice new queen and you are back to two colonies. If you just want one big colony you can then choose the best queen of the two, kill the other one and combine them back to one big colony.
It's really easy with a Long Deep Hive - no messing about moving boxes about - just have to move the frames and divider.
