A bit of Bee work

[Mike Henderson]

I know there are several active or past beekeepers on this site so you may be interested in this.

I'm still a very beginning - novice - beekeeper but I did a honey harvest recently and took a few pictures. Take a look here (http://www.mikes-woodwork.com/Bees3-2016.htm). I probably didn't smoke the hive enough but I was afraid I'd over smoke them. Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated.

Mike

[Sean Troy]

Good for you and you are braver than I am.

[Lee Schierer]

One way to keep the bees off of you as you work is to work behind the hive or at least not in their flight path. If you work in their flight path they will land on you as they try to find their hive. The hive also remains calmer as the guard bees don't get alarmed.

I don't think you can smoke them too much. I use sliced up self fungus from trees. I break the shelf fungus off in the fall when I'm in the woods hunting, let it dry and slice it into thin strips on my band saw. I light individual strips with a propane torch and drop them in my smoker. It won't flame, but it burns much like a cigarette, just a glowing edge. I've used this for over 30 years with no visible long term effects.

I pull all the honey supers off the hive before removing frames. I move them a short distance away and then place an empty super on top of the hive. If a frame isn't capped enough to harvest it goes back on the hive with the bees still on it. If I intend to harvest a frame, I shake the bees off and brush off the stragglers. They then fly back to the hive. Once a frame is clear of bees, I put them in a second empty super and then cover that super while I work on the nest frame. This lets me transport less bees back to the house.

I noticed that your inner cover is located between you hive bodies and your honey supers. Is there a reason you do this? I keep my inner cover on top of all the supers, Once some frames start to fill up with nectar, the queen won't venture into the honey supers. I also use an outer cover that overhangs the sides of the hive to keep of the rain and snow (snow probably isn't a problem for you). I also cut a notch in the inner cover to give the bees an upper entrance and to let some air out the top of the hive during warm weather.

Now that your combs are all drawn out, put one less than capacity back in your super when you put them back on the hive. Evenly space the frames. The bees will draw the wax out a bit more to fill the gaps you made, which will let you slice off the cappings with a sharp knife, which is much faster than the tool you are using.

[Mike Henderson]

That's good advice, Lee. I learn a bit every time I talk to a more experienced beekeeper. Your suggestions are appreciated.

I do prop up the cover a bit with a twig to allow a top entrance and to ventilate the hive. That thing between the brood boxes and the supers is an excluder, of course. You're correct that I probably could do without it but I feel safer with it and it doesn't seem to cause any problems.

That's a good idea about putting one less frame in the supers. I'll try that when I put the empty frames back in.

I don't have a lot of experience with bees yet. My dad kept bees when I was young - from about when I was 8 to about when I was 12 - but a kid that age doesn't pay a lot of attention. And beekeeping has changed a lot since the 1950's.

Mike

[Oh, regarding the top, the climate in southern CA is pretty mild, with very little rain. Most of the beekeepers around here just use the flat tops like the one you see on the hive. However, when I made the top, I put galvanized sheet steel over the top to keep water away from the wood (and painted it). Works very well here. Most of the flat tops I see here do not have the sheet metal over the top and I've seen tops warp badly - and I'd be afraid that water would leak into the hive.]

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I buy honey and wax from a local guy and in the last jar we bought I found a bee! Well, at least we know it's real honey. I buy wax to make my own beeswax, turpentine, and linseed oil finish- perfect for workbench tops because glue won't stick to it. I also buy fresh coconut oil and cut the beeswax with it to make surfboard wax. (For those that don't surf, the wax is to give you traction on the deck of the board and should be a gummy consistency.)

[Frederick Skelly]

That was fascinating Mike. How long do you wait between harvestings to get that much honey?

[Jerome Stanek]

We always did the extracting in the garage as it seemed that there was a fine mist of honey in the air after we spun the frames

[Lee Schierer]

A lump of beeswax in the shop is great for screws. Drag the threads across the lump before screwing one in and it will go in much easier. The nice this is that the bees wax won't affect the finishing or stain the wood like soap or oil. I melt the wax cappings and then mold little bars of wax in those mini bread trays.

[Jebediah Eckert]

Wow Mike, "recent honey harvest", I had to check th date of the thread......oh, your in CA! I'm jealous, I was in my hives ever so briefly this week. We had a day in the 60's and I took that opportunity to sneak some winter patties in the hives. I'm a good 4 months out from honey, if I'm lucky and am having a good year. Looks like you had a great harvest.

I am no expert but I stick to what works for me. I know there are many ways of handling bees, if there are enough beekeepers on here we can potentially have another "sharpening thread" :D

I always work the bees from the back of the hive. The only thing I do in the front is a puff or two of smoke in the entrance to let them know I am coming. I never have any equipment or anything on the side or front of the hive, but that would be tough with your setup. When harvesting honey I use a "fuming board" on top of the super. After a few minutes the bees go down deeper in the hive. When there are no more bees in the super I get it out of there and keep going. Based on the equipment I see I'm sure you guys know what your doing and it's obviously working for you. I also have an experienced beekeeper who helps me. But again, like sharpening, the few times I have read some different techniques and I ask him about it I get "no, this way is better, do it this way." Haha, OK, I'm just happy to get help.

[Mike Cutler]

Mike

Nice pic's, thank you!

Everyone that works bees comes up with their own method, and generally it evolves over the years. Each location is different and requires subtle changes to management.
If I were to have your hive these are the things I would do;

Move it away from that fence so that you can get behind them. It's much easier to work the bee's from the opposite direction of their flight path.
It looks like you either have an inner cover, with queen excluder insert, or queen excluder, between the deep supers and your extraction supers. Not sure which you have, but at the point of harvesting honey you want to install bee escape board somewhere for a day or two prior to harvesting honey.
I would swap out entire extraction supers with new ones, and not do it frame by frame. That's kind of time consuming and the bees get pretty excited. At one time I had 14 hives in the back yard, so I wouldn't have that amount of time. Now I have none.:(
A day or so prior to harvest. I would remove the top two shallows, place an empty shallow on top of a queen excluder, then put the bee escape on top of the empty shallow, then put the original shallows back on top of the bee escape. A day or so later, 95%+ of your bee's will naturally be out of the extraction supers and already working on pulling out the newly installed shallow that you placed on top of the queen excluder.
I never liked the fume boards personally, but they do work and many beekeepers use them. It would save time, if that's an issue for you.

As for smoking them too much? You can smoke them too much at any one time, which can force too many bees out of the hive at one time, but continuously applying the smoke at intervals is fine.

Once again, thanks for the pic's. They may spur me to start that Top Bar Hive I've been wanting to build.

[Jim Becker]

Thanks for posting this, Mike! I'll be sharing it with Professor Dr. SWMBO later for sure...she's just embarking on becoming a beekeeper "as we speak". In fact, we just got a notification that her first hive and other stuff is arriving today via FedEX and we'll be working on assembling and painting it this afternoon. I got the "foundation" in last weekend with space for two hives and the bees are scheduled to arrive on 9 April.

[Michael Weber]

Great pictures Mike. Made me nostalgic for a former hobby. I built a home made extractor based on a garbage can from plans in Mother Earth News. Worked surprisingly well for a couple of hives or so.

[Mike Henderson]

Mike

Nice pic's, thank you!

Everyone that works bees comes up with their own method, and generally it evolves over the years. Each location is different and requires subtle changes to management.
If I were to have your hive these are the things I would do;

Move it away from that fence so that you can get behind them. It's much easier to work the bee's from the opposite direction of their flight path.
It looks like you either have an inner cover, with queen excluder insert, or queen excluder, between the deep supers and your extraction supers. Not sure which you have, but at the point of harvesting honey you want to install bee escape board somewhere for a day or two prior to harvesting honey.
I would swap out entire extraction supers with new ones, and not do it frame by frame. That's kind of time consuming and the bees get pretty excited. At one time I had 14 hives in the back yard, so I wouldn't have that amount of time. Now I have none.:(
A day or so prior to harvest. I would remove the top two shallows, place an empty shallow on top of a queen excluder, then put the bee escape on top of the empty shallow, then put the original shallows back on top of the bee escape. A day or so later, 95%+ of your bee's will naturally be out of the extraction supers and already working on pulling out the newly installed shallow that you placed on top of the queen excluder.
I never liked the fume boards personally, but they do work and many beekeepers use them. It would save time, if that's an issue for you.

As for smoking them too much? You can smoke them too much at any one time, which can force too many bees out of the hive at one time, but continuously applying the smoke at intervals is fine.

Once again, thanks for the pic's. They may spur me to start that Top Bar Hive I've been wanting to build.
Thanks for the suggestions, Mike. I'm pretty much stuck with the location. My wife is not too keen on the hive and that's about the only place I can put it. I did learn from this episode not to stand, or let anyone else stand, in front of the hive.

That's an excluder between the brood sections and the supers. I'm going to look into an escape board and try what you suggested. Lee also suggested taking the supers off and away from the hive when working with them.

I built a top frame hive for my beekeeper friend. You can see what I did here (http://www.mikes-woodwork.com/TopFrameHive.htm). Last I checked, she had not put bees into it yet. One question on top frame hives - they tend to be horizontal while a Langstroth hive is vertical. I thought bees prefer a vertical hive (don't they always move up?). Also, bees have to generate heat in the winter and it seems that a vertical hive where the heat rises would be better than a horizontal hive. Most of the top frame hive stories seem to come out of Africa where it's hot.

Anyway, I keep working and trying to learn. My next question area is about the brood sections (the ones under the supers). Seems that the wax in the brood frames will get old and dirty from continual reuse in raising brood. Should I start rotating new frames into the brood sections? Maybe one frame every couple of months? I can take a frame from the outside, slide the frames from the middle to the side and put the new frame in the middle. Good idea or not?

Mike

[Dennis Peacock]

Most excellent Mike! I've though many times about setting up a couple of hives here on my property since I live out in the country. I'm just not sure about startup costs and such because that does play a factor in my decision making. :)

[Mike Henderson]

Most excellent Mike! I've though many times about setting up a couple of hives here on my property since I live out in the country. I'm just not sure about startup costs and such because that does play a factor in my decision making. :)
Since you're a woodworker, Dennis, you can make a hive pretty easily. The frames are pretty cheap and they're much better to buy than to try to make yourself. The only "expensive" thing is a suit but even that's only about $100. After that, it's finding some bees.

Pick up some books on beginning beekeeping.

Mike

[Jerome Stanek]

Since you're a woodworker, Dennis, you can make a hive pretty easily. The frames are pretty cheap and they're much better to buy than to try to make yourself. The only "expensive" thing is a suit but even that's only about $100. After that, it's finding some bees.

Pick up some books on beginning beekeeping.

Mike


If you post that you will remove swarms you can get them free. Our biggest expense was the extractor with a uncapping knife

[Jebediah Eckert]

I have never rotated out frames in the brood. The guy who helps me has been doing it for like 40 years and never cleans anything. He says the bees clean anything out they don't want or need pretty efficiently. This year I processed the wax from my capping a for use in the shop and on end grain cutting boards. It's a chore to clean. He laughed when I told him and said just lay it out on a cookie sheet and put it about 20 yards from the hive. The next morning I went out and it was spotless dry flaky wax.

[Jebediah Eckert]

Most excellent Mike! I've though many times about setting up a couple of hives here on my property since I live out in the country. I'm just not sure about startup costs and such because that does play a factor in my decision making. :)

I pay about $100 for a new package of bees but that is because they are trucked up from the south. I would think you could find a local bee farm and get a package in Arkansas for about $30-$40.

[John K Jordan]

Nice post!

Your helper is too big! :) Years ago I bought some "Wee Bee Suits" and even 5-year-old kids love to help. A little smoke will go a long way to keep the hive calm. A couple of puffs of smoke in the entrance and under the top cover (then wait 2-3 minutes) does the trick.

333622

I always strain the honey directly from the extractor and strain honey from the cappings. If selling honey some people don't like to find bee pieces and wax in the bottle! Last year I bought a silicon mold made for soapmaking and made a lot of beeswax bars. The woodturning club loved them. Cappings wax is the absolute best.

I purchased an inexpensive honey refractometer to test the moisture and if a tiny bit high in water content I put screened 5-gal buckets in a room with a dehumidifier for a few days which brings it right down. Without the refractometer, all you can do is guess.

I've had bees for years but had to rebuild two years ago due to a total loss. Last year I got 28 gallons of honey mostly from one hive in its second year with some help from another hive. I had 7 supers on that hive and they probably would have filled more if I had kept up properly. The other hives were new nucs so I didn't expect much from them. BTW, a 5-frame nuc is about $160 around here (TN). This is a FAR better way to start a hive than a 3-lb "package" since it is already an established colony.

I agree with the comment to provide some working room behind the hives if at all possible - it disrupts the hives far less to work from behind. Fortunately I have a good spot overlooking the horse pasture, facing east so the hives get the "wake up" sunshine.

I don't use the bee escape boards and no longer handle the individual frames outdoors - for some years now I have been carrying the entire super about 30 ft to a small table and blow out the bees with an electric blower, from one side, then the other, repeat. A leaf blower works too. When clear of bees, I stack the supers on a flat piece of plywood in the back of my little farm truck and put a top cover on the stack to keep the bees out. This is far quicker than my old method of brushing the bees off each frame.

I see you use two deeps for the brood chamber. Good - some people still use one or one deep and one med or super but I don't think that's enough to get through the winter. The winter's here in TN are not too bad but not enough space for honey stores can kill the hive. In face, last year I started leaving a full or mostly full super of honey on top of the deeps for the winter. Of course, living in the Land of No Winter the methods have to be different.

Educate the family that bees foraging for anything, water, nectar, pollen, or resins, do NOT sting and will not sting unless you accidentally squish one. You can pick them up and cup them in your bare hands and all they do is buzz. Also, bees swarming do not sting. (Of course, you mess with their house, watch out!) Unfortunately, there is a lot of unjustified paranoia, some if it fueled by people who get stung and can't tell the difference between a honey bee and a yellow jacket!

Our favorite part of beekeeping is putting the extracted frames outside on the deck to let the bees clean them up. This attracts many, many thousands of bees for a few days. I used to hide in the house and watch them from the glass doors but I eventually got over that and just go out if I need to. It is kind of cool to be in the middle of such a massive, frantic bunch of bees in shorts and tee-shirt, but as I mentioned, they never sting when foraging.

Oh, one thing I was told and I never had the guts to test it: supposedly the scent of bananas is close to the hive alarm pheromone. I am careful not to eat a banana before I hang out with any honeybees, even in a full suit! And speaking of bee suits: I quit wearing the full suit some years ago. It is far quicker and works just as well to use the jacket and hood. I wear jeans, tuck the bottoms into socks, then slip on rubber muck boots. Angry bees can sting through socks and they seem to get extra mad at black socks (or dark clothing of any sort - I read somewhere this might be due to the attraction of bears to hives.) I have never been stung through jeans regardless of how mad they were.

I'm actually on the way out to inspect my hives in a few minutes. I fed sugar syrup with the spring medication and I need to make sure that is gone before I add supers. The flowers are coming out all over here after the warm days this week.

JKJ

[Mike Cutler]

Thanks for the suggestions, Mike. I'm pretty much stuck with the location. My wife is not too keen on the hive and that's about the only place I can put it. I did learn from this episode not to stand, or let anyone else stand, in front of the hive.

That's an excluder between the brood sections and the supers. I'm going to look into an escape board and try what you suggested. Lee also suggested taking the supers off and away from the hive when working with them.

I built a top frame hive for my beekeeper friend. You can see what I did here (http://www.mikes-woodwork.com/TopFrameHive.htm). Last I checked, she had not put bees into it yet. One question on top frame hives - they tend to be horizontal while a Langstroth hive is vertical. I thought bees prefer a vertical hive (don't they always move up?). Also, bees have to generate heat in the winter and it seems that a vertical hive where the heat rises would be better than a horizontal hive. Most of the top frame hive stories seem to come out of Africa where it's hot.

Anyway, I keep working and trying to learn. My next question area is about the brood sections (the ones under the supers). Seems that the wax in the brood frames will get old and dirty from continual reuse in raising brood. Should I start rotating new frames into the brood sections? Maybe one frame every couple of months? I can take a frame from the outside, slide the frames from the middle to the side and put the new frame in the middle. Good idea or not?

Mike

Mike

Bees will move in just about any direction as long as there is room. Where the bee ball is at, is where they will control temp the most. Moisture is actually the bigger concern in the winter. Any moisture accumulation in the hive can be problematic. My first "hive" was in the soffet of our house, so they had been moving up and down at 37 degree angle for years. (Almost 300lbs of honey and comb was removed from that soft. What a mess!)
The Top Bar Hives have been in use for centuries in one form or another. I think their origin is Greece. I just like them for the simplicity.

One method that some beekeepers use to rotate out old comb is to standardize their equipment. By using medium supers for the brood chamber and the extraction supers. This way comb can be moved about the hive as needed that is already pulled out, but since you have deep supers for your brood chambers already, it might be too late to switch to all mediums. You certainly could put a deep on top as an extraction super and once you've harvested the honey, you would now have deep frames that are already pulled out. A deep super full of honey is pretty heavy though.
I never had too much of a problem with comb getting old and too dirty, the bees keep everything clean if they're healthy. I had more issues with the brood chambers getting "pollen bound" and moved out frames of pollen to make room for brood.
If you want to rotate out frames, I would place one, or two in frame position 2 and 8 about a week before you swap hive body supers in the bottom Let the bees begin pulling them out and when they're just about finished, it should be time to swap, and put those frames in positions 4 and 7. The majority of your bees and brood pattern should now be in the bottom super of the brood chamber and the queen should have plenty of room to move up and find your newly pulled out frames to lay a brood pattern in.
Every few months would be too often. I would swap out one or two frames, maybe once a year. As you rotate your hive bodies, the bottom should be somewhat empty and then you would move frames in to the middle from the outside. They need room and they will find it.
Hive management is trial and error and then more trial and error. if there was one sure fired way to do it, we'd all be doing it the same way, but there isn't.
The key thing to remember is that the bees know more about bees than we ever will. Let them tell you what needs to be done, and is working.;)

[Art Mann]

Just an observation. I was a part time commercial beekeeper for several years and I was a member of the local and State beekeepers associations. I ran into a lot of beekeepers. A unusually large number of them were also woodworkers. I just wonder if it is that way everywhere and if so, why that is.

[Michael Weber]

Anyone done this? Pretty interesting. Mason Jar beehive.recently saw the attached on Pinterest.com but evidently there is a bit about it on the web in general.

[John K Jordan]

Anyone done this? Pretty interesting. Mason Jar beehive.recently saw the attached on Pinterest.com but evidently there is a bit about it on the web in general.

Cool idea, but does this mean the comb they build in the inverted jars is left in the jar and extra honey added? If so I wonder about some things: high water content from uncapped honey, things that might be in the comb (small hive beetles and larvae, bee parts, etc.)

JKJ

[Mike Cutler]

Anyone done this? Pretty interesting. Mason Jar beehive.recently saw the attached on Pinterest.com but evidently there is a bit about it on the web in general.

It looks pretty cool, as a gift, but I tend to agree with John about controlling the contents of the jars. Shouldn't be any "bee parts" if done properly though.
Some folks do like the wax, and eat it along with the honey, so they buy comb honey,. The manner in making comb honey is probably how those jars are managed. Instead of a comb honey super being put on, they put those jars on top of a hive, just on the verge of swarming, during a high flow period. This way the walls of the wax would be very thin and the honey content higher, as the bees would have been working very fast.
I used to be very OCD about the cleaning, filtering, and settling, of the honey I sold.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

This has been most interesting. A couple of questions:
- how do they package bees when you buy them? (Referring to Jebediah' post above about buying bees.)
- how far from dwelling places do the hives need to be kept?

These are curiosities. At the moment I don't have any place to put a beehive.

[Mike Cutler]

This has been most interesting. A couple of questions:
- how do they package bees when you buy them? (Referring to Jebediah' post above about buying bees.)
- how far from dwelling places do the hives need to be kept?

These are curiosities. At the moment I don't have any place to put a beehive.

Malcolm

Bees are usually shipped in a "package", a 3lb. box, with a queen . The queen is in a separate little cage with a candy plugged hole that the worker bees will spend about 1-3 days to eat through and release her. This way there is no issue and all the bees smell the same, so they won't kill her. It will take 21 days for her first new bees to emerge after she is freed from the cage. At this time ~ 1/2 the original 3lbs. of bees have been lost, and now the hive cycle will begin. She will lay 1500-2500 eggs a day, so it will take 4-6 weeks for the hive to come up to a full strength of ~ 70,000 bees.

Another way to obtain bees is in a "Nuc". This is a small hive body, usually 5 frames, that the queen and the workers have been working already as a hive. It will already contain brood in various stager. With the life cycle of a bee being 42 days, a "Nuc" will put the bee keeper about 6 weeks ahead of starting out with a package.

Established beekeepers will perform what is known as a "split" from the hives in the apiary. Essentially they will take brood frames from multiple hives and form a new hive. There are a few ways this is accomplished. You always want to have at least 2 hives going at any one time and 4 is ideal for long term management in a small setting.

Hives can be kept as close to a dwelling as the beekeeper and family are comfortable. There are instances of hives being located on porch overhangs and worked through a 2nd story window inside the house. A bit too close for me.
I had 14 hives about 100' from the house, and other than backing into one ,and knocking it over, with the lawn tractor, ouch!!!!! :eek:, never had an issue. I had a Two Queen pollination hive about 35 feet from the house that I rented out.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Thanks, Mike, that is very interesting indeed.

[Mike Henderson]

Established beekeepers will perform what is known as a "split" from the hives in the apiary. Essentially they will take brood frames from multiple hives and form a new hive. There are a few ways this is accomplished. You always want to have at least 2 hives going at any one time and 4 is ideal for long term management in a small setting..
Mike - want to talk a bit about doing a split? I have two brood sections on my hive. Could I split by taking one brood section and moving it to another location? Whichever section has the queen would continue normally. Would the non-queen section make a new queen from the brood? Or would the worker bees migrate back to the hive with the queen? I couldn't move them too far apart - my yard is only so big.

Or should I order two new queens and put one in each split brood section assuming that the old queen might kill the new one in that section?

Mike

[John K Jordan]

As Mike said, hives can be almost anywhere. I've seen them very close to houses. However, a couple of things: it is best to position the hives where they get morning sun - this gives them an advantage over hives that are shaded until later in the day since those get started later. But if you can provide shade from hot afternoon sun it can help the bees keep the hive at the right temperature in the summer.

It is nice to position hives, if possible, facing an open area. Working space behind the hives helps a lot.

Try not to position them just beside a sidewalk where bees moving in and out of the hive would annoy people walking by. This can sometimes be done if there is a solid fence or high hedge next to the sidewalk which would cause the bees to fly up higher and over the heads of people on the sidewalk. Best not to position hives where they fly over where you park a car, unless you don't mind the car being covered with bee waste!

We have no issues in our area with "africanized bees" which can be extremely aggressive and dangerous, but I read there are special rules for such hive placement such as the distance from people, minimum 1/4 mile or something.

Some people are irrationally afraid of honey bees. One thing that can improve relationships with neighbors is to give them some honey each year!

As for knocking a hive over, I haven't done that (yet!) but my bees get VERY upset when I mow in front of them with my big diesel mower such that the air from the mower deck blows directly onto the hive entrance. They get mad and some come out in large numbers and try to chase me away! When I mow I adjust my pattern to minimize blowing at the hive but I usually wear a net over my face and neck (the kind used by bow hunters) or mow very fast past the hives! They are not the least bothered by weed whacking.

JKJ

[Lee Schierer]

Mike - want to talk a bit about doing a split? I have two brood sections on my hive. Could I split by taking one brood section and moving it to another location? Whichever section has the queen would continue normally. Would the non-queen section make a new queen from the brood? Or would the worker bees migrate back to the hive with the queen? I couldn't move them too far apart - my yard is only so big.

Or should I order two new queens and put one in each split brood section assuming that the old queen might kill the new one in that section?

Mike

If you split the hive and move it a short distance ( a few feet), yes a lot of the field bees will return to the old location. You also shouldn't try to move a hive a few feet as the bees will get confused and land at the old location even if teh hive is no longer there. There are techniques for relocating hives that are too detailed for a discussion here. The queen less colony might be able to make a queen, but it is safer to be prepared with a new queen in a cage and let the bees release her in 2-3 days. If you re-queen a hive, which you should do every year, you need to remove the old queen and introduce the new queen in a cage. Otherwise the queen that ends up dead may be the new one instead of the old one that may be failing. A failing queen can lead to a swarm, which is generally a bad thing for your honey production.

[Mike Cutler]

Mike - want to talk a bit about doing a split? I have two brood sections on my hive. Could I split by taking one brood section and moving it to another location? Whichever section has the queen would continue normally. Would the non-queen section make a new queen from the brood? Or would the worker bees migrate back to the hive with the queen? I couldn't move them too far apart - my yard is only so big.

Or should I order two new queens and put one in each split brood section assuming that the old queen might kill the new one in that section?

Mike

Mike

There are literally volumes written on the subject of splitting hives and all the different ways to do it. There are a couple of fundamentally wrong ways to do it, but there are many, many ways to successfully accomplish it.
The degree to which you want to manage a hive, and what it's being managed for, has a lot to do with your strategy. A hive for pollinating has to be in a constant state of building. A honey production hive has to have a stable population. Comb honey production needs a hive right on the edge of swarming. Multiply these by the number of hives and the strategies can be widely different. A big pollinator might take his hive numbers from 20,000-30,000 hives in winter, to 250,000 hives during season, and back, depending on the crops. California has the most $$$$ pollinating crop in almonds, so it's very big time in your state.
For the small person with just a few hives you could do as you indicate and just simply split the hive and move them, but you really do need to know which hive has the queen before you start, or re-queen each hive at the split in the beginning of the season. Adding a new queen probably has a better chance of success.
A strong hive on the verge of swarming can be split into two hives and there will be plenty of bees to provide each hive with workers. In this case a beekeeper would simply be splitting a hive that is going to naturally split, so you would move the brood comb complete with queen cells and let nature takes it course.
I've split them by creating two queen hives on top of each other and next to each other, with common honey supers. Within a few days bees are going in and out of each hive, the numbers aren't going down and a queen is being reared in one of the hives.
Introducing new queens has the added benefit of not "inbreeding" your hives. It keeps the genetics clean and some people believe that you end up with a stronger strain of bee. Not sure about that though.
One problem is that whatever method works this year, may not work next year, so it's a constant learning process.

[John K Jordan]

Just for fun, a few bee pictures for a beekeeping thread:

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I took the closeups from the deck. It was somewhat challenging.

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JKJ

[Jim Becker]

John, I'm glad to see they like that particular tree species. I have a small one on our ground near the natural flight path and a property down the road has a couple really large ones. Yea, just a small speck in the local foraging area, but nice to know, nonetheless.

[John K Jordan]

John, I'm glad to see they like that particular tree species. I have a small one on our ground near the natural flight path and a property down the road has a couple really large ones. Yea, just a small speck in the local foraging area, but nice to know, nonetheless.

The Golden Rain trees are amazing bee trees. Every year I watch them - the bees start coming in mid June and are there every day for at least a month. I'm not kidding - the trees are loaded with bees nearly at first light before the sun is up and they are still at it long after the sun sets.

When taking the pictures I saw at least seven different species of bees from honeybees to bumblebees and some unusual bees I've never seen before. By counting a small area and multiplying I estimated between 2000 and 4000 bees in the tree at one time, all day long. I can hear the buzzing when I step out on the deck. (Since everything was moving and the macro lens had a very short depth of field, I took over 400 pictures to get six good ones!)

The Golden Rain trees are considered an invasive problem species by some people since they propagate with many small saplings under and around the mother tree. They will flat take over an area in a few years. However, they are no problem in a yard where the the mower is run occasionally. I have collected seed and passed them out at the beekeepers club meeting.

BTW, I believe it is called a Golden Rain tree because when the flowers are done the petals fall off creating a surreal, silent golden rain underneath!

JKJ

[Michael Weber]

I used to like saying my redbud tree throbbed with bees.