Splitting Bees

Did you know that you can make one hive into two? Well, you can. I had two hives and now I have four. I will tell you why you should split bees. I will also be talking about how you split bees. 

You may be thinking what is splitting? Well, splitting is where you buy a queen bee and then take 4 or 5 frames in a good hive and then put it in another hive. We buy queens but some people just take the queen from another hive. This method takes a risk because you do not know if they will make a good queen and it takes a long time. 

How to split? The way I tell you how to split is one method and the one that fits us best. Two days before we are going to split we find the queen and mark the 4 frames we want in the new hive. In the frames we mark, we are looking for all the stages of eggs, honey, and pollen. Then, when we find the four frames and the queen, we put the queen down on the bottom box. Then we put a queen excluder on top of the box which looks like this. That makes it so the queen does not go up in the top box. Then the second box we put the four frames that are marked in there. Then when it is the day of splitting you take the four frames and the queen you bought and put it in a new frame then you are done!

Some of the pros of splitting would be that you have more hives, which means more honey in the future. Also, splitting makes hives not swarm because you basically swarmed for them. But some of the cons are that the bees may not like the new queen. Also, the bees just could be too small and not make it thru winter. 

That is how you split a hive. Some beekeepers split way too much and make a whole bunch of weak hives. But if you split the perfect amount and the perfect time then splitting is a good way to expand your bees.  I hope you learned something!