bee-keeperSooner or later every beekeeper wants more colonies — to make up for winter losses, strengthen the apiary, or make nucs to sell. The smartest way is to do it on purpose, with an artificial split, rather than waiting for a colony to swarm and lose you half its bees over the fence. This guide shows you how to make new colonies from one strong hive, and how bees raise a queen.
Why make artificial swarms
An artificial swarm (a split or nucleus) is a colony you make yourself, under control. The reasons are clear: you prevent natural swarming and the loss of bees, increase your number of colonies, make up for losses, keep a reserve with a young queen, and can rear or sell queens and nucs. It is one of the most useful jobs in beekeeping.
When is the right time
You split when nature is ready: when you have a strong colony with plenty of brood and bees, when there are drones in the hive and the area (the queen has to mate), and when it is warm with a flow on. In our region that is usually from mid-spring to early summer. Do not split a weak colony — from two weak ones you get two problems.
The simplest way: a nucleus (nuc)
The easiest way for a beginner is a nuc. From a strong colony you take 2–3 frames of brood, bees, and food (with eggs and young larvae if you let the bees raise their own queen), put them into a smaller hive or nuc box, add a frame of food, and close it. So the foragers do not fly back to the parent colony, move the nuc at least a few kilometres away, or narrow and close its entrance for a day or two.
How bees raise their own queen
If the nuc has very young larvae (less than three days old), the bees will choose a few of them and raise queens from them — these are emergency queen cells. From egg to emerged queen takes about 16 days, and then she needs a few more days to mate and start laying. Patience is key: do not open the nuc too much until she has mated. Once she is laying, mark her with the year colour.
Adding a ready queen or a queen cell
You have three ways to give the nuc a queen. You can let the bees raise their own (cheapest, but slower and the genetics are unknown), add a ripe queen cell from a chosen colony, or buy a mated queen (fastest, and you know the origin). You introduce a bought queen in an introduction cage, gradually, so the bees accept rather than kill her — never just drop a queen loose into another colony.
Queen rearing for the more advanced
Anyone who wants many quality queens moves on to real queen rearing: you pick the best colony (calm, productive, healthy) as the source of larvae, graft very young larvae into artificial queen cups, give them to a strong queenless cell-builder colony to raise, and mate them in small nucs. It takes technique and practice, but it gives you queens to your own standard and of known origin.
Mistakes to avoid
The most common mistakes when splitting are:
- Making a split from too weak a colony, or giving it too few bees
- No eggs or young larvae in the split, so the bees cannot raise a queen
- Splitting too early, in the cold, so the brood and queen get chilled
- Leaving too little food, so the split starves
- A weak split becomes a target for robbing by stronger colonies
Record the origin and age of every queen
When you make new colonies, it is easy to lose track of who came from whom and how old each queen is. In the bee-keeper app you record the queen, year, and origin for each hive, so you always know which colony needs requeening and which of your lines are best. That is the foundation of serious, planned beekeeping.