Glad to have helped. Thanks for watching, Gary!

Awesome, I'm glad to have helped.

Thanks, Richard!

Thanks man. Now if the temperatures could just get and stay in the 50's and 60's up here I'd be truly happy.

Thanks for the support, Dennis!

Sounds good.

Thanks for the support!

Yep, sounds good, other than the possibility that that queen might not be able to properly get mated, if it doesn't get warmer here really quickly. If that is the case, use the advice in this video and give them a frame of open brood, and then seek out a queen or queen cell. Let me know if you have any questions, I'm happy to help.

That is exciting! This is your first year? If so, please, and I say this all of the time on this channel, please feel free to hit me up with any questions you might have. Comment on any video or brett@bkbees.com, I'm happy to help.

Thank you, Noah!

This is exactly why I made this video :)

Good luck, Glen!

Thankya, good luck with your splits!

Absolutely, agreed, I definitely should have mentioned that. I might make a video on split mistakes I've made, which would include this one, my second or third year keeping bees.

It's really a practice in spotting the differences, scan your eyes across the frame paying attention to the bees that pop out to you. You'll start to notice lots of drones, and you'll have to train yourself to ignore those, but you'll also notice the queen eventually as she's usually a more uniform color, and much bigger. Practice makes perfect. I have had a couple of people talk about this really recently, I might just chat about it in a future video. Either way, good luck, and thanks for watching.

@@BKBees Thanks for the advice. I will practice. A video on this would be great!

Sounds like you did very well. Good luck with 'em!

Yep, perfect plan, check them 3 or 4 days after your split to see which one has cells and which one has eggs. Also a good plan giving that split portion the queen cell, I'd bet that's the queenless portion, because it's more likely that the queen hid in the parent colony, on the side of the box or on the bottom board or whatever, than you missing her on a frame you were moving.

@@BKBees Got back in to inspect to hives today and found the queen did in fact make in the split hive, so the parent hive is queenless. I put a frame with eggs on it back into the parent hive (and left the queen in the split) per a local club member's advice.

Yeah, we're still really far from splitting here. I hate painting so much. It's my least favorite thing to do as a beekeeper.

Very cool! That's exciting. I'm truly jealous :)

Awesome. I'm very happy to have helped. Please let me know if you have any questions, and good luck with your bees!

You can feed your splits whatever you want, pollen is a good thing to provide if you aren't giving them bee bread frames. I always set aside my "split frames", which are the ones that are heavy with honey and bee bread, that eliminates my need to provide pollen sub. I shake bees right over wherever they're going. If it's in a split I shake 'em over that box, if I'm shaking bees off of a frame to give to another colony I'll shake 'em right over the frames of their colony and take the frame away. You can shake them into a tub, and you're right, the foragers will get up quickly and go somewhere and the nurse bees will crawl around, but it works over the hive too.

@@BKBees Thanks for the clarification.

Yeah, might as well use those queen cells to your advantage, I totally agree.

Pushed wrong button.Thank you for your input and support.

How did that work out? Sorry it took so long to respond but that might be good, I hope you have good new queen news for me!

Thanks, Howard!

Thank you, Louise!

Thanks for the support, Forrest. I know the Silver Lake area well, that was always a summer destination for me and my friends when we were kids. In my opinion it's best to move the queen to the new spot, let the foragers return to the queenless portion, if you're doing walk away splits on a few hives. You're right in that foragers are more likely to be aggressive toward a queen, but, that's why we use queen candy releases when introducing new queens. If you bought one without candy in the cage, leave her caged in the hive for 3 or 4 days before releasing her. The foragers will be convinced she's worthy at that point. The reason we move the queen to the new spot is, or reasons are: #1: This more accurately simulates a swarm, more effectively knocking the swarm impulse out of the hive. #2: Moving the queen to the new spot will keep some foragers with her, as opposed to moving brood frames without a queen, in which case every single forager will return to the old spot. #3: The majority of foragers returning to the old spot is good, as the population is likely to dip in the coming days/weeks, as the queenless hive becomes queenright. #4: the foragers returning to the portion that might be making queen cells is great, the incoming nectar and pollen will be a boon to the nutrition of the coming queen. But honestly you can do it any way you want. I don't do too many "move the queen" splits at this point in my career, unless I see a hive that is ready to swarm. For the most part I go through in the spring and take brood frames and resources from every hive to get them to about 6 frames of bees and brood, equalizing all of my hives in the process of taking splits. You can do it like this as well. Up to you.

Yup. Cold at least for another week for me. It'll be like 55 tomorrow and then straight cold for 7 days.

That's the struggle for northern beekeepers... If the nights are still that cold they aren't likely to swarm, but, when the nights are warmer there won't be much time before they do. I think your plan is a good one, but plan firstly to get into that hive as soon as is safe. For me that's a 60 degree sunny day after the nights are done freezing. Get in there, check for cells, if you see some, enact a split right away. Move the queen and some bees/resources off to the side and let the parent colony keep two of the cells they built, tear the rest down. You can then get on the phone with your queen provider and try to move it up a bit, or let them make a queen and requeen when your purchased queen shows up. Sorry if that was long and convoluted. Please hit me up with any questions you might have. brett@bkbees.com is a better place for extended discussions, as I sometimes miss replies here.

@@BKBees Thank you for the great advice and I will get into it soon, days are warm and forecast looks good for a check.

What do you mean? That doesn't sound fun, whatever it is.

I'd suggest a swarm simulation split. Find that queen and move her and bees/resources to a new location, plus a couple of extra shakes of bees. Remove all but two really nice cells in the parent colony to prevent swarming.

I don't have any problem with that with a cell or queen, it's too small a group of bees to raise a good queen though, in my opinion. Do be aware that a 2 framer will fill up really quickly. visit them weekly.

I have thought about that one pretty hard over the last couple of years. The only reason I haven't done that before now is my migrating and fluctuating ideas as to what is best. At the very least if I do this I will have to come out with different editions. If I find a better way to do something or find an error in an old way I'd be forced to amend the text and publish a new edition. I don't think that's a deal breaker, but it's kept me from moving forward on it so far. As far as ultimate material for beeks to learn from, the next project is a redo of the crash course, better videos, better audio, and a follow along text with quizzes are all in the plans for the near future.

There are a lot of people that think that. Fortunately it is not true. A strong population of bees, the right aged larvae, and plenty of feed will determine the health of the queen cells, and queens. I was capturing virgins today as they emerged and they were so big they looked mated. They looked like that because I made sure my splits had those three things.

I don't even have anything to add here, Stefan took care of this one perfectly. Thanks, Steve for watching and commenting, and thanks, Stefan for the perfect answer!

I don't believe that to be true at all, one of many long lived misconceptions. The bees work the cell the exact same way, with the same amount of nurse bee visits to the cell, same amount of development time, same everything, regardless of the situation. The quality of the queen is dependent upon the underlying genetics, and the available food and nurse bee workload during development, in my opinion. So, make sure your splits (the portions that are raising queens) are stacked with bees and food and they'll make awesome cells.

It might be too late in the year to consider splitting, depending on where you're at and what the common practices in your area are. Even if it's not cold, if there's not available nectar there might not be drones flying to mate. Find out what locals are doing (seek out an experienced local or find a facebook group) and figure out if you have time yet this year. If not, just feed 'em and split 'em in the spring. As far as how to split, I have a video called splitting your hive the easy way, I recommend watching that. As far as how far away to move your hive when splitting, I have a video called the importance of nurse bees that will explain that idea in detail. To summarize, when you move a hive less than a few miles the bees that have oriented to that spot (the foragers, older bees) will always return to the old location. That doesn't mean you can't move a hive just a few feet, you just have to be aware that you are going to lose foragers. Some people battle this problem by moving the queenright portion of the split to the new location a few feet away, that way the queenless portion gets the returning foragers. You don't have to think about it that deep though, just be aware that over the course of 24 hours after splitting, if the splits are within 3 miles of each other, there will be a population shift. Check the population the next day and adjust as needed. This is a lot of information, feel free to message me an questions or requests for clarification that you have. I'm happy to help.

@@BKBees Thanks for the info

Yeah, early in the year you want to err on the side of more room. If you think it's possible they could need another box, add it. They'll fill stuff quickly in the spring.

I'm in south east Michigan so do you think the low night temperature would be a problem if I add a honey super, last year I didnt add one until late may so I didnt realy think about it.

@@frankz.8359 no, it won't be a problem, and always err on the side of more room rather than less, in the spring. Once those dandelions pop I put honey boxes on all of my colonies. Right away.

Thanks , just added it. There was about a half dozen swarm cells, so I might be splitting it sooner than I planned.

24 hours.

thank you sir.

Pet bedding. Pine shavings.

I’m in Texas so keep up the good work I like the videos

brett@bkbees.com for bee stuff, brett@brettkozmadesigns.com for development stuff. What email did you try?