Split - National into Commercial

[SunnyRaes]

We need to do a split tonight of one of our national hives with charged QC's.

Someone at work is looking for bees, however only has a commercial hive. In terms of our complete kit however, we only have a Nuc box left. We have a brood box, possibly a floor, but we're definitely out of roofs.

The guy from work can bring his hive over around 8.30pm, so we still theoretically have time to do something, but what will be the best option??

I was thinking that we re-home the flying bees, queen and supers on the original site, and shift the old box with the QC, brood and non-flying bees on top of the commercial hive. Once the queen hatches and starts laying, we shift her downstairs, put in a queen excluder and wait for the brood upstairs to hatch before removing the National BB and he can take his Commercial hive away to its new home (say in around 3 weeks give or take).

This is potentially going to give him more than a Nuc's worth of bees, and we're also reliant upon the flying bees going back to the old site tomorrow, as they won't be flying tonight. So one question might be, do we leave more than just 1 brood frame with the queen, or is that just risking continued swarming?

Is this logical? Any other suggestions???

 

[Graham40]

The National has the same foot print as the commercial so the bars should hang ok, but will need to be padded out in the commercial to keep them stable in transit.

Id use 2 dummy boards to cut the size of the commercial down. Close the door and prepare for immediate transfer to his site. But make sure that the frames cant move in transit.

Take 2 to 3 frames of brood with Q cells from the parent stock. Remove all the other cells from the parent hive. However leave at least some eggs in the parent stock in case of any mishap with HM. Id select the best 3 or 4 and leave them in the split, might be an idea to have eggs in here as well if the transit is rough then Q's might not hatch. Not all QC's hatch unfortunately.
Also this operation should take place when the bees are flying you want most of your field bees back at home so when your shaking in the bees to the split those that go home are welcome.

If possible find HM and cage her while split taking place. If you have her in a cage then its easier to do the split, its just then a matter of shaking in additional bees. Remember to put in at least one outside bar with food if possible. Id take the bees from the outside. If they are getting ready to go the bees you want to remove will be hanging downwards on the outside bars laden with stores anyway. Unfortunately if HM is ready to go she will be there as well.

Then stick a transit screen on and move them away that night. I use this method myself on my own bees, I always move my splits to another apiary immediately it saves desertion and robbing.

 

[SunnyRaes]

Thanks Graham! That has helped significantly!

Typically, we missed the rain in the weather forecast (don't ask what I do for a living) so I suspect we'll be doing this in the wet tonight, simply because the unsealed QC's were spotted on Tuesday, so if Queenie hasn't gone already, they'll be about to! So I'd rather get it done than leave it.

However we won't be able to do it during normal daytime hours so bees are unlikely to be flying until following day.

It's also unlikely we'll be able to transport tonight, so I suspect the hive will be with us for a while. Not a killer, but if the National frames will at least fit in the Commercial hive, then we probably don't need to worry about having 2 brood boxes, and the added time that comes with then having to split them. Although I take your point about robbing / desertion!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I'd say carry on and do a proper A/S (pagden method) but as you are giving your friend the 'new' queen from the A/S in his hive, with a slight deviation. Leave old hive at old site, remove all frames to the commercial box bar one frame of brood with the queen on which you should leave at the original site the rest of the hive being filled with new frames and foundation - with the supers on top. Commercial box being moved more than three feet away
There should be enough young bees in the supers to keep HM company for tonight. The rest of the foragers will end up there tomorrow.
Cull the queen cells from the commercial box leaving one good uncapped one.You can fill the gaps with commercial frames as well.
This will satisfy all the points in an A/S - taking the 'split' back to your friend's apiary now would mean a lot of 'flying bees' will still be with the QC hive meaning a good chance of the fliers still instigating swarming.

 

[Graham40]

Yup you could do it that way as well.

I prefer to control numbers in the box's I generally do this op early evening, preferably when extracting honey, as I can dump the foragers out of the supers into the new nuc box, causes confusion at the front of the hive with foragers heading home and not bothering me when i'm robbing their honey (just make sure there's a new brood frame in the box before you start preferably drawn - it gives them somewhere to hide). So once I've dealt with the honey I return n grab myself a couple of frames for a nuc, job done. As I don't care which half ends up with HM I'm happy as long as both parts have eggs no problem. Just another tool in avoiding swarming/over crowding.

Generally if the flying bees are heading home rather than setting up camp in a new box they aren't the ones thinking about swarming, its the ones you leave in the main hive you have to concern yourself with. Which is why I also raid the outer frames where they congregate.

Of course to be sure you could just dispose of HM and raise new queens.

If its a double box you could just bust it apart n have 3 to 4 nucs. Or come back on another raid later.

I do this if its a good breed of bee. Been raiding one stock since May it was on a triple brood box a week back, so got 2 more nucs out of one visit. still left an awful lot of bees behind.. 1301 and 1302 are already mated might even get them to the Heather this year.

 

[SunnyRaes]

I guess the alternative is we give him the old queen and fliers... Would be easier, the only reason I was thinking not to was that she is definitely a known good Buckfast queen!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I guess the alternative is we give him the old queen and fliers... Would be easier, the only reason I was thinking not to was that she is definitely a known good Buckfast queen!

But how old?

If that was the case (and would be my choice) you could just do a nuc split. Take out the queen and a couple of frames of brood and a good shake of nurse bees (Personally i would keep them in the apiary for 24 hours for the fliers to return to the home hive) then give him those. Just reduce the number of QC's you have left then all's done

 

[Graham40]

third option capture HM plus 1 frame with lots of nurse bees, a frame of stores couple of shaken frames of bees (from the outside )- move this to opposite side of garden, fill the entrance with grass - by the time they remove the grass a day will have passed and they will reorientate them selves - i.e. shes swarmed treat it as a nuc and split the remaining parts. That way you still have HM, plus you have the possibility of a nice new queen.

If shes more than 2 its not worth worrying about - she will be replaced soon anyway.

 

[mbc]

I guess the alternative is we give him the old queen and fliers... Would be easier, the only reason I was thinking not to was that she is definitely a known good Buckfast queen!

Without a brood frame to anchor them (and her) it would be advisable to cage the queen, but this would certainly be the easiest way of occupying the different sized frames - or just raise a nuc on nationals and shook swarm them onto the commercial size once the queen's mated and laying.

 

[SunnyRaes]

The existing queen is last years, and a known good queen of good temperament. After discussing with the other half, she doesn't want to lose this queen, so let me run this one past...

We aren't doing this tonight now - too wet! So I may do it tomorrow morning, which would solve the flying bee issue as they'd all go back to the original site.

We do an artificial swarm, putting all the QC, most nurse bees and all brood frames bar 1 into the commercial hive on a new stand. This is going to have to be at the other side of the garden :/ as we have no space near this hive.

We put a new brood box on the existing site, filled with new foundation. we put in 1 brood frame (no QC) plus queen plus flying bees plus shake of outside bees, and they have now effectively swarmed. (thought: This could allow us to then move to 14x12 on this hive too...)

Once the new queen has hatched, we take out all bar 5 frames (ie: a Nuc)from the commercial hive and unite these back into the original hive, replacing these frames with his Commercial frames. He then takes the commercial away, swapping out National frames for commercial ones as he goes along.

Does that work??

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Don't forget to reduce the number of QC's after you've transferred them (One good open one should do - although some like to leave two).
When the new queen has emerged and mated and you are sure she is laying, you shouldn't have much brood in the commercial hive - leave as much of the brood on the five frames which will make up your new 'nuc' shake all the bees off the rest - hopefully/ideally there will be no brood on these. And do what you will with them (spare drawn comb, or put back in original hive). No real point in faffing around trying to re-unite what will only be old flying bees. The queen will need these to raise her first brood.
Your original queen will have been laying full speed throughout this period and shouldn't need any help.

 

[SunnyRaes]

Brilliant - thankyou everyone!