Hi there we are here to talk today about splitting colonies dividing colonies how to make up
new hives to replace losses that we might have or to expand our bee keeping operations
this is the animal husbandry side of bee keeping its something that does intimidate new bee
keepers making up splitting these colonies but once you start doing that you are in charge
of your own self sufficiency and you can absorb losses through the winter because you are
always making up new colonies I encourage everyone to give this a try if you haven't
already and as you will see there are simple ways of doing it we are going to show you
three different methods there are many different methods of splitting bees but we'll show 3
that we find work pretty well if you have seen our double nuc video you'll have seen
our preferred method of making up new colonies but we'll show you three other ones starting
right now Brooke's going to help me out and the first thing we will do is to go through
this colony and we are going to find the queen so this method does require finding the queen
in the colony the other 2 methods that we are going to show can be used if you are having
difficulty finding the queen or you don't want to take the time to find the queen or
you find that process intimidating so we'll take these honey supers off good strong colony
lots of honey in both of these boxes so we will go down into the brood chamber I like
to have a sit down to find this queen and we'll just work through frame by frame and
find our queen and cage her so that we can then make up a split my preference is is to
leave the queen in the original colony and introduce the new queen to the split the split
won't be as strong as the parent colony and so its more likely to accept a new queen than
a big strong colony nice big solid brood patter there and we are just searching through to
find our queen oh there she is right there so I can just set that frame down and get
to her quickly I'll lay the frame down flat so I can pick her up so now we are ready to
make up our split so Brooke is going to bring over a box here and just set it down nice
and close so we are able to work on that together and if you'll see the bottom board is is screwed
into place here so this is all one unit makes it a little easier to move around so its a
4 inch screw going up in there if we are using a screen bottom board and a 3 inch screw if
we are just using the regular bottom board so 1 screw here and 1 screw there and that
holds everything together we've got this all full of frames but we are going to take some
of them out so we'll take 2 out of there Brooke you can take the other 2 out of the middle
and we'll take a couple of these foundation frames out of the middle as well so now what
we want to do is put 2 to 3 frames of capped brood into this new split that capped brood
will hatch out quickly and the population will grow rapidly here this is a pretty warm
day its about 28 degrees so there's not a lot of bees in the brood chamber and we are
going to need to add a lot of extra bees to keep that brood warm when it gets cooler tonight
we are going to make up this split and leave it in the same yard so we'll loose bees back
to the original location so we need to add a lot of extra bees for those 2 reasons so
we'll take a nice frame of capped brood I'll pass that to Brooke she can put it in another
nice frame of capped brood and we are going to give them 3 frames of
capped brood we've left lots of extra space here so that we can shake bees into that extra
space as well so we are going to shake a minimum of 3 more brood frames in so we are adding
young bees the young bees are adhering to the brood frames and they are more likely
to stay with this split so we'll shake those in we'll just give it a real sharp shake you
hold it very firmly and give a sharp shake lots of nectar coming off with that shake
so those bees stay down nicely there for us so 1 2 3 and we are actually going to give
them 4 shakes here this colony will recover pretty well there are bees up in the honey
supers there are lots of bees out foraging so they will rebound very quickly and it won't
hurt for us to take some of these bees out ok so now we can put all of these frames back
into place we are going to keep the brood together all in the middle here and then we
are going to put extra frames back in you want to grab a couple honey frames there Brooke
so put a foundation frame in there and basically put in what we have for frames these bees
will do well with that this ones got quite a bit of honey in it they will move that honey
into the honey supers we've got a partly drawn comb here we'll put that in so now we are
back to 10 frames there and we can release the queen in the parent colony and put it
back together going back to the split we now have our 3 brood frames we are going to put
those in the middle we are going to put drawn comb on either side of those if it is available
so we've got drawn comb here and then we will finish up with the last foundation frame there
we'll put an inner cover on there you want to give that a bit of smoke Brooke and we'll
put that inner cover on there now what I like to do when I am making up a split is move
it to a new location so that the bees reorient back to their new hive but not everybody has
different locations to put their bees so in that case what we would do is reduce this
entrance and set it somewhere in our bee yard we are just going to set it off over here
and that would be the new location for our bee hive so once we've made the split up the
next thing is this is a queenless split so we either need to introduce a mated queen
which I have here or a queen cell so in either case we open up the colony some people choose
to leave the colony queenless for a day before they do this other bee keepers introduce the
queen right away it doesn't really make a great deal of difference so we go to our brood
frames that we had put in the middle and we orient the cage with the screen facing down
and just put that in between those frames like so squeeze those back together a little
bit and we close that colony up I like to leave anytime we introduce a queen I like
to leave them for a week before we go back and check on them to make sure that she's
had the opportunity to get laying eggs build up her pheromone production and she won't
be rejected at that point if you check too soon the bees can actually kill the queen
so we leave that for about a week and there we go that's making up a split with the first
method so the first method of making up splits you can do all at one time you just go to
the bee yard and make up your split after you find the queen the next 2 methods we are
going to show you you don't need to find the queens but you do need to do it in 2 time
intervals so the first method what we are going to do is we are going to take a split
out of this box but leave the bees down in the box so we don't have to find the queen
because if we leave all the bees from the brood chamber down there she can't be with
the brood frames that we move up you'll see what I mean in a second here so take the honey
supers off Brooke's going to help me out with that alright so now we are down at the brood
chamber we are not even going to look for the queen we are going to make sure that they
are queen right they've got eggs and larva and pupa and all the normal stuff in there
but we are going to I can look in there now I can see capped worker pupa so I know that
everything's been a normal situation Brooke's going to set another box down on the side
here on a bottom board sorry I'll get that bottom board for you Brooke we'll just set
it off here to keep it up off the grass there we go so what we'll do is we'll take four
frames out of the middle of that you can go ahead with that Brooke while she is doing
that I am pulling out a frame here I can't help to have a quick peek for the queen so
I'll just have a quick check there lots of good capped brood so this looks like a great
colony to split so we'll take 2 frames out and that will give us lots of room to shake
bees so what we are going to do is just pull out a frame there there is some unsealed brood
there that'll do we'll put 1 of those frames in so we'll shake those bees off with lots
of space there we are not worried about crushing bees and we'll put that into our new box there
1 2 frames of brood 3 frames of brood we'll give them a frame of drawn comb we might as
well give them another frame of honey there go ahead with that Brooke and now we'll fill
this box up with frames then we are going to put the queen excluder in place here we'll
set this box up above the queen excluder and then we can put the honey supers back on top
of that I'm not going to do that right now though but we would come back to this hive
the next day take the honey supers off and then this is our split the bees that we shook
off some of them will come back up and populate this box and be taking care of the brood but
we know because we shook all the bees off the brood frames that we didn't put the queen
up here she is down in this location so then we can just come along again this is the next
day and we take that off and we set that on to a bottom board we introduce a queen
there actually isn't a queen in that cage but we are just showing you how you would
do this so we introduce that queen and then we put the inner cover on and the lid and
presto we have a new bee hive so we haven't had to find the new queen and we've chosen
the right amount of brood to take the bees themselves have repopulated so there are a
right amount of bees on that brood it would be ideal if you took this off early in the
morning when there are lots of bees surrounding that brood so that you get that split made
up at that time of the day moving on to the next method of making up splits so this is
the last method of splitting up hives that we are going to show you as you can see this
hive has 2 brood chambers so it started off with 1 brood chamber we gave it a second brood
chamber and now we are going to divide those two brood chambers so we'll make a split by
dividing the whole colony to make it a little easier so we don't have to find the queens
what we are going to do is put a queen excluder in that position leave the one in this position
so you'll need 2 queen excluders for this job and lets get started with that Brooke
we'll take the honey supers off first so now we are going to split this box and it will
be a little harder to pry apart but we will pry up and then we will move our hive tool
in here and pry any frames down that are sticking but yeah it's definitely stuck on there there
we go excellent great thanks Brooke and then we'll set that box down into place we'll put
the original queen excluder back on which is right here obviously still on and then
we can set our honey supers back on we are going to leave this colony for a week now
so this method requires a considerable period of time to plan and execute what we are going
to do is come back in a week and we are going to divide these two boxes so lets just pretend
that this is a week a week has elapsed and we are coming back to check on the colony
nice day huh Brooke here we go we'll take that apart all over again lets do this 2 at
a time this time what I want to see now is where the queen is because we have left it
for a week there will only be eggs in the brood chamber where the queen is present and
that is the box that we are going to leave in position in the original location so just
loosen up a few frames there pretty much just honey here I'm going to go more into the middle
where we can see where the brood is I'll look at that frame there alright no eggs there
but there is brood no eggs there as well lots of nice brood there
and I can see from looking down that there are 2 more frames of brood in there so that's
a nice healthy split to be taking so we are just going to go ahead and take that box off
we'll set that bottom board down right there actually I think we'll put it down right here
and we can get that frame back into place if you want to grab the back of that box its
pretty heavy and we will set it down there then we will take our queen out and pop her
in between where our brood frames are and grab our inner cover and lid alright we have
a split there ready to go now we can just close back the original colony we know the
queen is in here because there were no eggs present in here if we wanted to make sure
we would just double check to make sure there are eggs in there but I'm quite confident
that that's what the situation is this hive is actually pretty strong and it is going
to need to be supered very soon we'll leave it for a week for that queen to be accepted
and start laying eggs we'll check to see if there are eggs present we don't have to find
the queen just look for the eggs and then we will give them a honey super so there you
go that's 3 methods of splitting colonies each have their pros and cons but I would
encourage you to try making up splits to become more self sufficient in your own bee keeping
operation its a very rewarding thing to be watching those new colonies grow and good
luck with your splits and your bee keeping