My sweet honey at C81

Can't help but hear that Tom Petty song each time I click this thread.
 
Thanks for the update. I’m deep into reading and learning. Might join a club. I’ve been looking into downsides of the Layens style hives. I’ll probably wait until next spring to start just because I feel like I’m behind the curve.
 
Questions for @Racerx or others familiar with bees, as a potential new beekeeper in the future;

-If you split hives to prevent overcrowding, don’t you eventually run out of time and money because you’re doubling your hives every so often?

-Assuming you keep hive height reasonable adding only a few boxes, are splits typically done once a year? I realize some of this is related to pollen and nectar flows, but in general is this correct?

-If you limit the number of hives you manage, and you don’t spilt, they will swarm, right? Can you just naturally let them leave, and the half left behind will raise a new queen, with all the brood, honey, and comb that’s already there?

-if all we do is split hives and prevent swarms, then genetically won’t the swarm genes start faltering? Maybe silly.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Questions for @Racerx or others familiar with bees, as a potential new beekeeper in the future;

-If you split hives to prevent overcrowding, don’t you eventually run out of time and money because you’re doubling your hives every so often?

-Assuming you keep hive height reasonable adding only a few boxes, are splits typically done once a year? I realize some of this is related to pollen and nectar flows, but in general is this correct?

-If you limit the number of hives you manage, and you don’t spilt, they will swarm, right? Can you just naturally let them leave, and the half left behind will raise a new queen, with all the brood, honey, and comb that’s already there?

-if all we do is split hives and prevent swarms, then genetically won’t the swarm genes start faltering? Maybe silly.
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The bees need space for brood and honey. You can split a hive and create another hive with the split. Or you can keep stacking honey supers to prevent them from swarming. All in what your goal is. I'll typically only have 2 deeps and 2 supers. If they need more room I'll take the bottom super and harvest and replace with fresh super depending on the flow. Otherwise it gets to tall.

Generally swarm season is late april-mid june. I'll only split a hive during that time as I want to give the split enough time to build up there numbers and honey stores for the winter. When you split without a mated queen to release it's going to be 6 weeks ish before the new queen's brood starts hatching. It's 14-16 days for new queen to hatch. 7-10 days before she's mated. A few days to start laying eggs. And 21 days for workers to emerge from egg to bee. During that time the bees that are there have nothing to do but collect nectar and pollen. So you have to make sure they don't get honey bound and there's a place for the queen to lay when she's ready. But you're bee numbers will start to decline so I usually supplement with a frame or 2 from another hive to build it up faster.

Theres not really swarm genes. The Russians tend to swarm easier. But bees want to swarm when they're out of space. Like people....is there such a thing as too much garage space? When we're out of space what do we do? Build a pole barn. When the pole barn is full we start packing the airplane hangar. Now with bees there's a theory of "demoralizing" where if you give them too much space too soon they won't build as fast. So the rule is 80%. When theyre working 8 frames of a 10 frame box, stack another.

When you buy a package of bees, you might get bees from 10 different hives shaken together then into a funnel into the package box. It's been like that for decades and bees still swarm when they're bound up.

When swarms do happen, it looks like a bee tornado for 30 minutes. Really cool to see. Scares the crap out of everyone else though. You can usually follow them to see where they land as it usually won't be far, at least right away. Sometimes they'll move later on.

It's rare for a swarm to happen in July. There's a nectar dearth so the bees typically have space as they're consuming honey the same pace or faster than they're bringing in nectar. They're also a little more feisty this time of year since there's not much to do.

One thing I will do later than swarming season is start a nuc. So I have spare queens on hand. But that's only taking 1 frame out. Might take one frame out of 3 different hives. When they build out on those, I'll put those frames from a nuc into a weaker hive.
 
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