A couple of weeks ago the Chief split the beehive. I’m going to explain to you what that means and why you do it. You have bees, right? You should get some.
Bees are individual little creatures, but their colony can be thought of as an organism unto itself. (I thought this was a super insight by the Chief but the other day I read that Aristotle had made this observation. Sometimes the Chief does this to me — passes off some ancient knowledge as his own, and even after almost 37 years of marriage I'm still all “he's so smart.” But then, it is smart to read — and remember — Aristotle, and also to keep your girlfriend interested.)
So the bees lay eggs and hatch new bees (their eggs are called brood)… but at a certain point, if the colony gets pretty large, there’s another way they can reproduce: they split the colony, making two colonies from one, and swarming.
They do this by making some of their brood into different kinds of cells called queen cells. They just go on laying their eggs in the ordinary way, but at this point they direct some of them for this other function. This is a mystery.
The queen is quite a bit larger than other bees, and her cell that she starts out in is also quite a bit bigger. So the beekeeper sets himself the task of checking the brood, to see if the laying is going well, but also to see if there are these larger cells developing. Every once in awhile you pull the brood frames out and give them a little look. (This post has lots of pics and also VIDEOS — very short, as I personally get impatient — they are below.)
The one thing you do not want is for your bees to decide they need a new queen and start making their plans to swarm away!
On the other hand, if they are getting so big for the hive that they want to do this, and if you manage it, you essentially have free bees! You can take that developing new queen and some of the bees and set them up in a new hive — getting yourself two hives for the price of one, which is a pretty sweet deal, let me tell you! (The colony is the bees relating to the queen. The hive is the place they live.)
If the bees have made it through the winter (always a source of anxiety when you live where we do), when things start warming up and the plants start to produce pollen, you can be pretty sure the bees will start to think about swarming. You really have to catch them before this happens, because unless you are lucky and they swarm to a nearby low-hanging branch or something, they just… leave.
We do have one beekeeping acquaintance whose bees do just that — they go to a nearby little fruit tree and all he does is shake them into a box and put them in a new hive. Bees often swarm to the same spot (having left markers behind), so this fellow really has it made — he has his own little colony production service going, and he even made a dedicated box that fits right over the particular branch they swarm to — that's how often they do it!
But here at the Manse that’s not how it works. They just leave.
We have an empty hive ready to go. This year, we are really trying to keep our bees happy and feeling uncrowded. We normally manage to get 40 pounds of honey in a harvest; our new goal is to see if we can get 100 lbs.
You can see: nothing is going on here in this hive. No bees at all, because the rather weak colony died over the winter, sadly:
He’s really well suited up because it turns out that he tests as extremely allergic to honey-bee stings. Yikes. He’s taken the treatments and I hope they have worked, because he’s determined to continue with all the gals.
Me, not so much (and actually, later I ditched the suit altogether because it's hard to take pictures with a veil on):
This is the busy hive… very:
He pulls out the frames of the busy hive to look at them. (26 seconds)
Nothing unusual in this one:
These do seem to be queen cells — see them there, below, at the top of the frame, the two bigger, lighter blobs than the others?
Here's more on that (9 seconds)
(But, full disclosure — we are not absolutely sure, so this is all experimental here — it's just that with one thing and another, we had to do the splitting right then. We'll see if it takes. In any case, this is what you do.)
So this frame goes in the new hive. You are taking out the empty frames in the empty hive, sticking them in the busy one, and putting full frames of brood in the empty one. Swapping, as it were.
Here's a video of that process (1 minute 8 seconds):
How do the bees not go nuts and sting everything in sight?
Well, you have your calm demeanor, your preternatural lack of fear, and possibly a good bee suit. You also have your smoker:
A tip from the bee-whisperer, our former bee inspector Ken, who kept hundreds of hives, drove around Massachusetts tending to people's bees, and also consults with NASA when they send bees to space (which they do, interestingly enough): keep the smoker as cool as you can — it's the smoke that slows them down, but the heat riles them up. Put some green grass on top when it's going nicely.
Now, this new hive will need honey and, obviously, bees. Normally, the bees do tend to the brood they are with.
So you put some honey frames in the new hive and you shake — really bang! — bees on top. Here is a view of that (17 seconds):
Now the brood frames are in the new hive, along with some honey frames and some extra bees. All that remains is to put a spacer box on top for the feeding jar (10 seconds):
The busy hive also got a spacer for a feeding jar.
Here, he is replacing the entrance reducer, which just prevents them from having to guard a large area from robbing bees. If another colony somewhere (and bees go really far to get food) finds that there is a nice store of honey right here, they will rob. Don't want that!
Here Phil is putting on the inner cover and smoking them (15 seconds):
You can see that they have more stories and are looking hopeful.
Now, for extra insurance against the good colony swarming, try checkerboarding. This is when you intersperse the frames with brood with empty frames, so that the queen doesn't start feeling that her job is done. And then an extra box gets put on top because that way, they all have room to expand without wanting to move out!
A few days ago we checked to see how things were going in the new hive. Signs of life and activity! Let's hope it takes!
Sally says
Thank you so much for sharing this!! Our 16 year old son has really taken to beekeeping. He lost both of his hives over the winter and I thought that he might be discouraged and not take it up again — his new bees will be arriving soon!! Your bee information has been so helpful to us. I wanted to tell you that sometimes even 16 year old boys read your blog:)) Thanks again!!
Leila says
Oh, Sally, that’s great! Good for your son. He should not feel bad about the bees not making it. Unfortunately, up north this happens a lot. If it snows like it did last year (not this winter but the one before) where we are, that’s great because the snow is light, plentiful, and airy, and insulates them really well.
But if not, it’s hard to know if they will make it. In the fall we will post about some ways to get them through.
I’m glad to know the posts have helped you. We always feel that there are many resources out there, but maybe our little way of doing things can be one more bit of knowledge in the pile 🙂
Shannon says
My husband saw a swarm while at our neighborhood park the other day with my son. I’ve just been researching swarms so this post is very timely and informative! Thanks!
Meg says
I just read a beautiful description of this very topic in a book called”The Keeper of the Bees” I hope the bees take for you!
Claire says
So, multiple questions from a fascinated city girl: the old hive, that still has a queen? How long does a queen live? Because you’re putting the frame with the (hopefully) two queen cells in the new hive . . .
The honey is food for the bees, yes? If so, what do they live on over the winter, do you leave some behind?
That tool he’s using — kind of like a crowbar — it looks like he’s popping something apart sometimes — do the frames get stuck to each other?
The whole thing seems positively magical!
Leila says
Claire, yes, the old hive has a queen. She lives for two or three years, usually. If she gets old or dies, you sometimes have to “re-queen”– introduce a new queen (which you can buy, actually, and it comes through the mail) to the bees with a process that gets them used to her (and not attack her!).
Usually they grow a new queen in there without swarming. You would see a quite large, uncapped cell called a supersedure cell. They do grow new queens quite frequently. Growing new queens in bulk would be a neat pursuit, as then one could sell queens to others, rather than being on the buying end. (This can be a pricey hobby!)
In the new hive, only one cell will become the queen — the first one to hatch will kill the others.
The honey is the bees’ food. You leave enough in there for winter. You only take what is extra. Sometimes the weather warms up and it’s clear they need more, so you feed them with sugar-water — something you also do in spring before there is food out in the world for them to make honey out of. That’s the “keeping” part — you don’t want them really leaving to find more food!
The tool is indeed to pry things apart. It’s like a super short crowbar or shaped putty knife. The bees seal everything up with propolis, a waxy glue they excrete that effectively keeps drafts and pests out. It’s super sticky and waterproof!
The frames don’t get stuck to each other, because they are cleverly designed to be just the amount of space the bees need to build up their comb, one cell deep (on the “foundation” which is comb-shaped — but only two-dimensionally so). It’s all very efficient — the frames hang in there and don’t touch, but are just the right distance away.
There is an actual thing called “bee space” — because they always build out the same distance. But they do stick the frames to the boxes, so some yanking occurs when getting them out to check and harvest.
It’s all magical. They are the most industrious and productive creatures, and everything they make has some amazing use!
And — you can keep bees in the city!! 😉
Kelsey says
I have long been inspired by bees. It’s true, everything they make is so useful and beautiful! The mysterious physics of their flight has also fascinated me. What a truly interesting hobby!
Claire says
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions so patiently!
Alas, we are living in a 55-and-over community at present, and the bylaws are fussy about the oddest things . . . however, we’ll be moving again within the next few years, and it’s likely we’ll move to a regular house. I’m going to add “ability to keep bees” as an article in the Desirability Quotient! : )
Nina says
Bee keeping really is a labor of love isn’t it? Some Australian beekeepers invented a new frame to make honey harvesting easier. Here’s the link, http://www.honeyflow.com/ thought you and the Chief might find it interesting. It’s quite clever, and if you do get one, please be sure to show us lots of pictures. (I’m not connected to the inventors . . . how “bleh” that one has to declare oneself not a salesman when sharing neat ideas!)
Leila says
Hi Nina, yes, we’ve seen those honeyflow frames. Very fancy, very expensive! It is a clever idea!
Sharyn says
Looks great! I think this might be what a friend has. I know she doesn’t get her honey the usual way at any rate.
Will bookmark this link for if we ever get our dream property and have the room for bees 🙂
Thanks for sharing the video’s Leila!
Rebecca says
Thanks for the great post! I noticed in your photos that you have a Top Bar hive as well as the Langstroth. I have a Top Bar hive that my brother built for me and have had quite the learning experience, with my first goal being to keep the dears alive. 🙂 Hopefully this year I’ll be able to repay my brother’s willing hands. Where I live here in Alberta, Canada, we have been blessed with an unusually early spring, so yay for flowers!
I’d love to see some more pictures of your Top Bar hive. Have you had success with it?
Thanks so much for all your great posts – you encourage my mother and I greatly in our vocations. 🙂
Logan says
We went on a beekeeping tour in a rain-forest in Cameroon recently. They keep the hives way up a mountain up in the trees and then haul the frames back down the mountain to process it. Can you imagine climbing thirty feet up a tree to split your hive?? Apparently the location makes for a very unique honey that that is famous in the region. After seeing this I became fascinated with keeping bees so your post is so perfectly well-timed for me!
We’ve noticed bees in Africa are particularly protective/aggressive around honey. Several times when we have opened a jar of honey in our kitchen within minutes we’ve have had hundreds of bees swarm our kitchen! Very exciting times.
Maureen says
Great post — excellent photos and videos! Thank you for sharing. 🙂
I hope you don’t mind if I make an observation but, unless I missed something, the cells along the top of that frame look like capped drone cells rather than capped queen cells. A queen cell, when completed and capped, is elongated (sort of peanut shaped), rough textured, and hangs vertically off the frame. Swarm cells will usually be found hanging off the bottom of the frame whereas emergency/supercedure cells will be hanging off the middle of the frame somewhere. Drone cells (larger than worker cells and rounded when capped) are often grouped together along the edge of a frame.
Good luck with your bees and honey harvest this year! This is our third year as backyard beekeepers and we still have so much to learn! I never thought I’d enjoy hanging around with thousands of stinging insects but they certainly are amazing little creatures, aren’t they?! 🙂
Leila says
Hi Maureen, I am interested to have your opinion. We were thinking they could be drone cells for sure. For various reasons we had to do the split then, and it did seem successful. But that could be for other reasons… We’ll consider it a win if the good hive stays put!
Tomorrow we will go in that hive and see what’s up.
It is an adventure!
Cathy L. says
My 9 year old son has been asking for beehives lately. It definitely interests me, too. bees are incredible, and…honey! Is it a pretty time/labor intensive hobby?