Three Hives Once Again

It was quite an active day in the apiary, splitting the Dmitry hive and installing a package of bees to make a third hive. Splitting an existing hive is the most economical way to add to an apiary and with the Dmitry hive stuffed full of bees, I needed to thin it a bit or they will swarm. I did what is known as a 'walk away split' -- moving frames full of brood and eggs as well as plenty of house bees into a smaller nucleus hive and 'walked away'! It doesn't take long for the bees to figure out they are queenless to select an egg or two and begin the process of making a queen. I'll look in on them in a few days to see if they've done just that.

I purchased a package of bees with a Russian queen for the third hive because a package comes with a mated queen who is ready to begin laying as soon as comb is ready. This gives a new hive an advantage over the one I just split out because it will be at least 23 days before the new queen is mated and begins laying. That is vital time lost as we go into the nectar flow. I'll have to feed the split hive probably all summer.

Here is the package queen with her attendants in her cage. (She is marked with a white dot.) Even thought the queen and bees have had a few days to get to know one another while in transit, it takes some time for the bees to accept her as their queen so she is kept safe in a cage that is plugged with a bit of sugar candy. By the time the bees eat through the candy and she crawls out, they'll be well acquainted.

To install a package, the queen is secured to the top of one of the frames and the bees are dumped in. This package of bees were surprisingly gentle! I needed to really bang the package to get them out and into the hive and very few got riled up from the process.

I put them in a deep super with frames of foundation. The entrance is minimized to give them less to defend while they get settled into their new home and I'm using an entrance feeder so that I can check in on them in a few days without needing to remove a top feeder full of syrup. I'll put a top feeder in place once the queen has been released from the cage.

Now back to three hives in the apiary, one strong and two budding, I'll have a fun spring. I predict the package will develop as nicely as the textbook examples. There's just something about how beautifully they stayed clustered and how extremely gentle they were.

But who's to say how the split will progress?! A walk away split queen is known as an emergency queen - one that is made from necessity and not by design. I eventually replaced the 2011 emergency queen as she never really laid well and we struggled for a year supplementing the hive with more bees from one of the strong hives. I am hopeful that this new queen, made from a strong and feisty hive will be just as strong herself.