Yeah I just have a couple hives that are doing a little too well and I want to split them asap before they swarm. I'm not to worried about honey, I just checked them the other day and it seems like they didn't even touch their winter supply yet. The supers I left for them are still Full in fact I'm debating if I should add another super.
Spring is about 4 weeks early up here. I would pull those supers full of honey and extract them...put an empty super in their place if you have a flow. I'd also reverse the bottom boxes if you have 2 brood boxes. That slows down swarming and let's you get some honey while they continue to build up. They might all be in the top brood box and will expand and continue to grow. If you don't have a flow I would not split - but that's just me
Yeah I'll give it two more weeks and I'm pulling all supers and extracting them. As far as switching the deeps around I can't, here in Florida we only use one deep or at least I do. Our bees don't need a lot of honey to survive the winter like you guys in the north do.
spring here, and 30 last night.
This weekend is time enough to look, if drones, then split. and start trap outs on the forklift hives. (story for another day, have to go to work)
The weather is so confusing, I'm not sure about walk aways this year. So, I've decided to try Mann Lake's queen rearing kit... ok, so I wanted to try it anyway and the weather is an excuse. In my little mind, I should be able to save several weeks and make more splits with fewer mature frames and maybe sell a few virgins to boot.
In the rainy weather, I couldn't find the rascally laying queen I wanted for the mating box last week. I had to work "up norf" this week but will be home Monday and I am bound and determined to have somebody laying next week, and make up new nucs with queen cells by St Patty's Day.
the weather is a definite pita this year..4 days ago it was 60 plus and over the weekeend was in the teens and 20s, just warmed up to about 40 to 50 today and looks like a temp drop again at the end of the week..
Weather is drought here, according to the weight of the big hive I was going to split today. Will still split, but not today, and feed lids going on hives tomorrow morning, will re-evaluate situation in a day or 2. dropping to low 40's or upper 30's tonight, 2 frames of brood in top box and half a frame of nectar. That brood was uncapped, I didn't even go below to see what was going on. Will have to do when more stable warm temp, don't want to chill brood
We continue with the roller coaster weather. Going up to 55° today [rain], back down to 4° Saturday. I almost took my winter wraps off last week, so glad I didn't.
I saw an actual drone during a robout of the first swarm of the year, so yeah it's past time. I have only been in the top box of the big hive, have to feed this mornign deal with this afternoon
I split mine, figured out where the queen was today, will steal a frame of eggs from her for the other hive and switch their positions so the smaller half (2 medium boxes but half the bees) can collect some workers. sad truth, the Deep has the queen. I guess I can pull 2 medium frames, one from bottom box and one from top, or move the split into a deep, and just have their medium frames and a deep frame of eggs.
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