Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: Zane on March 09, 2009, 12:14:38 pm
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My wife and I caught the best swarm last year. Gentle, productive, happy, the works. We want to keep these genetics and see where they go. Whats the recommended way? Split and let them make another queen? and if so? when do I split? or what other recommended ways are there?
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Or you can do what I do...wait till they are getting ready to swarm, and then you can do a split for the queen mother and harvest all of the hundreds of queen cells and requeen all of your other hives with those :roll:
There are better ways, though....
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Is it your only colony?
If so I would let it get stuffed, not to a swarming stage. Just give plenty room and let it build up.
Then split and move the Queen with the split. With about one or two frames of sealed&growing brood
with all the bees on. Shake a few xtra bees in. Make sure to leave a frame with eggs/day old brood in the mother colony, leaving it in the old place. they should rear a new Queen.
I don't like waiting till they are ready to swarm to do this.
I split one last year that had several capped queen cells and they still swarmed, twice. Although I did get a good colony from it. The split did not swarm and also produced a good healthy colony.
I ended up with 7 colonies last year and haven't lost but one this year so far.
Still Recouping from my lost from year before last.
hope this helps. :)doak
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I wouldn't split before prime swarm season (here that would be mid May to mid June and you're probably two weeks ahead of that schedule). Make sure it's strong and really doing well.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm