Wondering how to make nucs for sale to offset the costs of your beekeeping hobby? Beehive splitting is a fundamental skill for any beekeeper looking to enhance their apiary's productivity and maintain healthy colonies. If you don't split your beehives either vertically or horizontally, the bees will split themselves for you, which means you will lose half of your bees into the neighbours chimney or a local school's tree. It's always one of those two isn't it!
In this straightforward guide, we'll walk you through the essential steps on how to split a beehive using a horizontal pre swarming splitting method, which is the simplest method you can use to make nucs for sale.
Why Split a Beehive?
Splitting a beehive is a crucial practice for three main reasons:
Preventing Swarming: As your bee colony grows, the risk of swarming increases. Splitting helps manage population size, reducing the likelihood of swarming. It's very important to ensure you make splits before the colony attempts to raise swarm cells. Once they are start to raise swarm cells, you need to perform an artificial swarm as opposed to making splits.
Managing risk: This is especially important if you only have a single beehive. The failure rate of colonies over winter is between 5-30%. This means if you only have a single colony, the chance of a full colony wipe out are surprisingly high. By splitting your bees your are spreading the risk of failure and always gives you a back up if colonies fail over winter.
Boosting Productivity: Creating new colonies through splitting promotes a balanced distribution of resources, optimising honey production. It's not always prevalent in the first year but the year after you make your splits, you will notice a marked increase in honey production.
Making nucs for sale: There is no getting away from it, beekeeping is an expensive hobby. However, it's quite easy to offset these costs by making nucleus colonies (nucs) for sale. These nucs command a high price in the spring and complement your swarm management strategy for the season. A two frame nuc taken in May can stop a colony swarming and has enough time to build up to overwinter on 6 frames or more, ready for sale in the following Spring.
How to Split a Beehive To Make Nucs For Sale
Step 1: Choose the Right Time
Timing is everything in beekeeping. Aim for spring when your colony is on the brink of expansion. Select a mild, calm day for the split to minimise stress on your bees and make things easier for the beekeeper.
Step 2: Assess Your Hive
Take a close look at your hive. Is the population thriving? Are the boxes full to the brim with bees? In the UK, we like to make splits in the first week or two of May. We find making splits at this point in the year is the perfect balance of thriving colonies and availability of mated queen bees. Don't attempt to split a beehive with less than 10 frames of bees. They aren't ready for splitting until they are filling at least one brood box. The video below shows a good example of a hive that is ready for splitting.
Step 3: Prepare Your Equipment
We like to prepare all of the equipment for our splits during the winter. For each split you will need a nucleus beehive such as the Abelo Poly Nuc and frames with foundation in to fill the nucleus hive. This will generally be either 5 or 6 frames. You will also need a way to feed the bees. The Abelo poly nuc has an integrated top feeder, but a frame feeder is fine if you don't have an integrated feeder.
Step 4: Divide the Resources
Now comes the split. If you find text a bit hard to follow, I will post a video for this manipulation below:
Open your colony of bees
Take an additional brood box and place on a hive stand
Go through the hive and find 4 frames of open brood
Shake ALL the bees off the frames and place into the new brood box (be sure every last bee is removed. You cannot risk transferring the queen
Place a queen excluder onto the brood box on the original brood box
Place new brood box on top of queen excluder with the 4 frames of open brood
Place roof back on colony and leave for 10 minutes
When you return, open the roof and you will have 4 frames of bees, brood in all stages, but most importantly, no queen. This is your split
Remove these 4 frames and place into your nucleus beehive
Fill any space remaining with new frames filled with wax foundation
Close the nucleus colony and move to a new apiary or somewhere else in your existing apiary (its much easier to take to a new apiary but still works ok in the same apiary - SEE VIDEO BELOW)
Remove additional brood box (now empty). Remove queen excluder and fill any gaps in the doner hive with frames of foundation. This colony can now continue its normal business.
Once you have taken the nucleus colony to a new apiary, open the entrances and let the bees fly.
After 30 minutes, fill the feeders with 1:1 sugar syrup and leave the bees alone.
After 8 days, return to the colony with a mated queen bee (available from Black Mountain Honey - BUY HERE)
Open colony and shake bees off all the frames. You will find a number of emergency queen cells which you need to remove. Remove them all. Do not miss a single one!
Place frames back into hive and add mated queen in her cage. Leave for 24 hrs with the tab closed. You can hang her between the frames with a matchstick.
After 24 hrs, return the colony and open the fondant tab. DO NOT OPEN THE QUEEN CAGE. Replace the cage in between the frames of brood and let the bees eat their way through to the release the queen bee
After 7 days you can return and check to see if the queen is laying eggs.
The split is now complete.
Step 5: Monitor and Care
Keep a close eye on both hives. Watch for signs of stress, check for diseases, and ensure the new queen is accepted. Provide supplementary feeding if needed during the adjustment period. Your new nucleus colonies will grow rapidly and will need additional space to prevent them from swarming later in the season.
Tips for Success
Keep It Simple: Stick to the basics. A successful split doesn't need to be overly complicated.
Choose a Good Location: When moving the split hive, select a spot with ample forage and
protection from extreme weather.
Record Keeping: Maintain a simple record of your split, including the date and any observations. This helps you track the success of your strategy.
Be Patient: Allow both hives time to adjust. Patience is key in beekeeping.
Learning how to split a beehive to make up nucs for sale is a valuable skill for beekeepers of all levels. By following these simple steps, you can successfully manage your colonies, prevent swarming, control diseases, and boost honey production. Keep your beekeeping practices clear, straightforward, and effective for a thriving apiary. Happy beekeeping!
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