When mid-March rolls around, we are on the tail-end of the almond pollination season (thankfully) and our bees have returned to Texas. As if the almond pollination season wasn’t stressful enough, Leo and the crew hit the ground running to start making splits.
Welcome to “Splitting Season.”
During this time of year, Leo and our team of beekeepers visit every single hive and make a “split” out of that hive. It’s exactly what it sounds like - they take one hive and make two or more hives out of that one hive. They split the hive into two or more hives.
Sounds easy, right? Well, not exactly.
Here’s a breakdown of the process Leo uses for making a split. There are two different methods, and this will explain both of them:
Method #1
(As a point of reference, a normal hive has 9(ish) frames of brood).
- Leo leaves 3 frames with the parent hive and puts 3 frames in 2 additional boxes on top of the parent hive.
- He leaves them stacked up so the bees divide themselves among the different boxes. This way, the bees will equalize themselves between those boxes.
- He comes back at night after the bees have equalized themselves between the boxes and moves to a different bee yard.
- He sets up the hives in a non-linear (random) layout in the new yard so the bees are less confused as to which hive is theirs.
- We do this primarily for Queen mating. Setting up the hives randomly in the new yard has significantly increased successful queen mating.
- The next day, or within 3 days, he returns to the hives and puts a new Queen cell in each hive.
- Now, you might have caught on to the fact that one of these hives has the old Queen (from the parent hive), and you’re right! Thus, when he puts in the new Queen, the “old” Queen will kill the new Queen.
- This is a much faster method for splitting hives than Method #2 (below).
Method #2
- Leo takes all of the frames out of the hive box.
- He puts 2 frames of eggs (young brood) in the bottom box.
- He shakes all of the bees into the bottom box.
- He puts in 1 frame of honey, 2 frames of eggs, 1 frame pollen, and the rest are empty frames, plus a feeder.
- He puts a Queen excluder on top of the bottom box.
- Then, he puts 3 frames of brood in the boxes on top of that bottom hive (on top of the Queen excluder)
- Bees will filter through the Queen excluder and occupy the other boxes, but at that point, we know for sure that the Queen is in the bottom box (without having to find her).
- Once the hives are moved (at night) to new locations, Leo will return within 3 days to put a Queen cell in the newly split hives (not the parent hive because the Queen stayed with the parent hive).
- This method is much more labor intensive and doesn’t re-Queen the parent hive.
We typically employ Method #1 when splitting our hives, simply because it is a much faster process. With several thousand hives to split, sometimes the decision simply comes down to ease and time constraints.
After the hives have been split, we feed the hives as needed, but we don’t do any invasive bee work for 30 days. We do this to give the hives time to establish themselves as a new colony.
After 30 days, the beekeepers start back-checking the queens. We could do it sooner, but 30 days gives the bees enough time to raise a new queen if they need to (for a second chance if the first queen didn’t “take”).
That seems like a lot of work to make more hives, doesn’t it? So…why? Why do we put so much time and effort into this task?
1. We use the Splitting Season as a way to make up losses incurred during the winter.
Losses are expected and normal in every beekeeping operation. We lose bees for a variety of reasons, including the stress of travel, mites, lack of forage, and most frustrating of all - completely unexplainable loss. That’s right. Sometimes we lose hives just because….we did. The mites were under control, the hive was strong, and it still died. It’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes, especially considering all the hard work we put in to ensure their health during the year. But it is a mystery and a part of beekeeping we simply have to deal with.
Thus, when we split the bees we currently have, we are able to regain the number of hives lost. That’s important because we need to ensure a strong number of hives headed into the summer season of honey production.
2. We use the Splitting Season to increase the total number of hives we have.
If you haven’t read our blog post on overcoming seasonal challenges, I encourage you to hit pause right here and go read that one. We believe that growth is essential to not only life, but business as well. As such, we use the Splitting Season as a way to grow the overall number of hives in our operation. But just like you can’t go from a quick jog down the street to running a marathon overnight, we can’t grow the operation too fast without careful consideration for all the factors involved.
For example, if we want to increase our operation by 200 hives, that doesn’t seem like too many, does it? Well, for each new hive, you need at least 2 brood boxes and 3 honey supers. That’s 5 more boxes for each hive, giving you a grand total of 1,000 more boxes. You also need 9 more frames per box, so that’s 45 additional frames per hive, coming in at a grand total of 9,000 more frames. And you need 200 more lids and 50 more pallets to hold all of the hives.
So it might not seem like a monumental leap, but depending on the income you’re projecting to make from those new hives and your current financial situation, it could be too much.
So what makes Splitting Season so stressful?
1. The weather
We probably sound like a broken record at this point, but anyone in the agricultural industry understands the strain of planning their operations around hot days, freezing cold days, unexpected torrential rainstorms, snowstorms, and everything in between.
If the area got too much rain the night before, we might not be able to get into a bee yard - hello, mud! If it’s raining, you still have to put in the queen cells. We have tents to carry into the bee yard for that very purpose. Typically, we don’t want the inside of the hive to get wet, but when we have to put in queen cells on a tight schedule, we make due with a tent and get the job done.
It also can’t be too windy or cloudy when the queen bees are trying to mate. This type of weather makes it harder on them and causes insufficient mating, which can show up later in the year as a drone layer.
So when we have lovely sunny days, we work around the clock to get the work done.
2. Timing
When we introduce new queens to the hive, this has to be done in a very specific period of time. We have to introduce the queen within three days of creating the new hive because we don’t want the bees to be able to hatch their own queen cell before ours hatches. However, we need the bees to know that they don’t have a queen because this allows for better queen acceptance. Quite the delicate balance, right?
There’s also the timing of when we work during the day and night. As you can imagine, the middle of the day is the hottest time of day while we’re working in Texas. So the beekeepers do most of the work in the morning because it’s at least a little bit cooler than it would be mid-afternoon.
Remember how we have to move the bees at night? That’s right. It’s better to move bees at night so the field force isn’t out and about doing their thing while you up and move their hive. It’s better on the hive overall to be moved at night, but then the beekeepers catch a few hours of sleep before waking up the next morning to do it all over again.
3. Balance
Just because you can make 1,000 more splits than you planned for doesn’t mean you should. Like we mentioned above, there’s a delicate balance between expansion and becoming over-extended. One is great, but the other can quickly become a headache and serious issue.
Here are a few questions we have to ask when expanding our operation:
- How many bee yards do you have to hold all of these new hives?
- Can those bee yards actually manage that number of hives productively?
- If not, do you have other yards you can use?
- Can you get new bee yards…and how soon?
- Are the new yards in good areas?
- Are they too close to existing yards?
- Are they not close enough to existing yards?
These and a litany of other questions can quickly bury a beekeeper’s enthusiasm if he has planned poorly. That’s why we have to strike the right balance and make sure we expand the operation in a way that is manageable and sustainable.
The Wrap-Up on Splitting Season
As you can see, there’s much more involved in beekeeping than meets the eye. Every season of the beekeeping calendar is critical as it leads to the next. We need strong hives to ship to our northern locations (in Colorado, Nebraska, and South Dakota) for honey production. Making it through the Splitting Season with the optimal number of hives is crucial for a productive summer season! But now you know the ins-and-outs of the Splitting Season, giving you a different perspective of how each season in our calendar weaves together!