Today’s Run: 5.17 miles
The bee shipment came UPS today. The truck pulled up and the guy handed me an envelope. I was puzzled. I have ordered bees in the past and they have always arrived in a small box. Uh-oh. I thought for sure those bees were doomed. I hurried into the house.
My husband met me at the door and I tore into the envelope. This is what I found.
No wonder they did not die~they were in little plastic “tubie things”. And they were pretty tough containers. The bees were fine.
We immediately “suited up” and began the process of hauling all the essentials for the days work: smoker, honey water sprayer, hive tools, soft brush, empty supers and frames…it took a while. We were finally ready to begin making our splits.
Making splits in its simplest form: A split is nothing more than several frames of brood, bees and food sources taken from a strong hive, and placed in an empty hive. You might think of it as a controlled swarm, although a natural swarm only consist of bees and not brood or comb. But, when making a split, we also add brood, nectar and pollen to the split. Thus, making a split can discourage swarming.
When making splits, we simply pull out a super of brood in various stages of development, along with the bees on those frames, and place them in an empty box. And, I feed my new split as well.
The most important part is the Queen! That is what we have been waiting for all this time. We ordered our new Queens on February 25th and they just arrived today. This time of year, everyone is making splits so the demand for Queens is very high. We actually received ours in short order. Some places had us waiting until the end of April and the hives would have swarmed by then.
Our apiary, as it stands today is five hives. We have four “box” hives and one “top bar” hive. The box hives stand up tall and are easy to see. The top bar hive looks something like a coffin in its shape. It sits low to the ground. We went and split our two box hives and re-queened all five hives. This will encourage a strong build up of bees for the busy honey flow ahead and it can also ease the temperament of the hives (make them so they are not quite so grouchy). You can see the four box hives center and right and the top bar hive to the left.
