How to transfer a brood split into an off-site hive

[JEP]

OK they are your bees so go for it. It doesn't matter what time of day you put the frames in the nuc box - I would suggest sometime when it is light so that you can see what you are doing but it is up to you. After you transfer a frame with some eggs you might want to try to include some with capped brood so that the bees don't have to look after too many larvae. I would also include some frames with honey but again up to you. It is common practice to shake the bees from a few other combs in as well to ensure that there are enough bees to prevent brood chill. It would be a good idea to ventilate the box they travel in with a screen and I would open the entrance or transfer them to a full hive straight away on arrival at the new site. Good luck!

 

[clv101]

My original question was not about queen rearing, however, but about the best procedure for establishing the split on the new site. We can talk about the merits of doing brood splits (or: emergency-style queen rearing) but the fact is that that is what I intend to do and I just need to know what is the best way of doing it, if the final destination of the split is elsewhere.

My understanding is that queens should be raised in strong colonies. Rather than taking a small amount of brood/bees/stores and have them raise a new queen, it would make more sense to take the old queen (+small amount of brood/bees/stores) to the new site, leaving the old strong colony with young larvae to raise the new queen.

 

[Tomo]

I'm sure that I read recently in the BBKA magazine (or our local Beek magazine) that so called "scrub" Queens should not be looked down on, and can be equally as good as an introduced Queen from an outside source.
The term "Scrub Queen" should be treated as an urban myth apparently!

Not my opinion as I don't have enough experience to have one yet!

 

[Dishmop]

Although I can't do much with the raw information from Finman's posts at this time, you have to admit that his posts have been the most comprehensive on numerical data in this thread thus far.

as usual..

 

[Finman]

Not my opinion as I don't have enough experience to have one yet!

When you see emergency queens and normal queens side by side, you need not to read which is better.

Most beekeepers do not mind what kind of queens they have in hives.

 

[Finman]

I'm out of this thread if we are going to be subjected to his usual blather. it is the beginner's section after all

Beginners are adult people and they do important tasks in their daily work and life.
Why they need fairytales and rubbish in beekeeping hobby?
If you keep only bugs in the wooden box, that is not beekeeping.

 

[Finman]

.
Own queen cells or buyed lying queen?

If you make a nuc and let it rear own emergency queens,
- it takes 10 days that new queen emerges.
- then it takes 10 days that it starts to lay.
- It is 20 days and same as one brood cycle.
- during that 3 weeks the amount of bees in the reduces 50% by natural mortality.
Its ability to rear new bees has become to half.

If you buy a laying queen, you start to get new bees at same time when own queen starts to lay. Your bee number is after 4 weeks 2-3 fold compared to the emergency nuc where bee number has went under half.

 

[drstitson]

there are emergency queens and emergency queens.

if you give the bees fresh eggs/newly hatched larvae to work from you are presumably more likely to get a better result than letting them use older larvae.