Bee Report — Splitting Hives and Raising Queens (Part II) by Low Technology Institute

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bee colony splits, Cowenta Beekeeping Method, making increase, making splits, OTS queen rearing, queen rearing

This is the second and final part of a short discussion of splitting hives using ideas found in Mel Disselkoen’s On-The-Spot (OTS) queen rearing method and the Coweta Beekeeping Method. In this post, I’ll go over how to finish the split by making hives for honey production or population increase. Check out the first post, where I describe how to split an existing hive and encourage the growth of new queens.

Some queen cells won’t be full sized. A good queen cell should look like a hanging peanut. Sometimes the “emergency” queen cells are noticeably smaller. These should be cut out, leaving only the largest queen cells. This is a chance to see the queens in their larvae stage.

Read Part Two of this article on Splitting Bee Hives here: Bee Report — Splitting Hives and Raising Queens (Part II) — Low Technology Institute

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Bee Report — Splitting Hives and Raising Queens (Part I) by Low Technology Institute

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beekeeping management, Cowenta Beekeeping Method, making increase, OTS queen rearing, queen rearing, splitting

Many beekeepers depend on purchasing packages (screened boxes full of bees with a queen) or nucleus hives (mini-hives to be inserted into a full-size one), which cost between $150 and 250 each, depending on the local variables. Some beekeepers end up purchasing bees each year to replace dead-outs (bee colonies that died during the winter). In addition to often getting a mix of random bees with no known genetics or winter survival success, its cost has caused some beekeepers to give up the hobby. One solution to this problem is to split your own surviving hives, creating new queens and colonies from your existing resources. Beekeepers have developed many methods to do this, but I follow a modified version of Mel Disselkoen’s On-The-Spot (OTS) queen rearing method and the Coweta Beekeeping Method. In this post, I’ll describe how to split an existing hive and encourage the growth of new queens. In the next post, I’ll go over how to finish the split by making hives for honey production or population increase.

Read part One of this Two Part Series here: Bee Report — Splitting Hives and Raising Queens (Part I) — Low Technology Institute

The Fresno Experiment – Exponential hive increase by Estrada Farms LLC

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beekeeping, honey bees, management, queens

Out of curiosity I suppose, Steve asked how often you can split a beehive in one year. In other words, if you start with one beehive, what is the maximum amount of queen-right beehives that you can have by the end of the year? I answered that I didn’t know, as I’ve never tried it before and there are so many variables to consider. But it did leave me wondering how many hives a person could make if their only goal was to make more beehives (not honey production), and so the Fresno Experiment was born.

The premise of the experiment was to find out how many hives we could make that would be able to overwinter on their own stores of honey (or very limited feeding).

Read more here:  The Fresno Experiment – Exponential hive increase — Estrada Farms LLC