Increasing number of colonies

[Zombee]

Hi,

As a second year beekeeer that has made it this far with my first queen and double-brood box colony I’m now looking to expand. The existing queen and her colony are very well behaved and productive so breeding from the queen makes sense. I’ve read quite a lot about how to make an increase but am nervous and want to minimise risk as far as possible.

I use the Demaree method for swarm prevention which involves manipulating the colony every 9-10 days to separate the queen from most of the brood, with a super and queen excluder between the two brood boxes. This seems to work well and leads to the production of queen cells in the top box, which are destroyed before I then reorganise the colony to maintain the separation.

I believe that one option would be to destroy all but one of the queen cells and simply take off the top box and move it next door, simply adding a top, floor and stand and wait for queen to emerge, mate and start production, although I suspect I may be oversimplifying this, so please correct me if I am wrong.

The alternative that I am considering it to transfer a frame with a queen cell to a nuc and add food, brood and nurse bees and then wait. This would minimise the impact on the main hive as I would simply replace what I have removed with new foundation and the colony would continue with a minor dip in population and brood. This seems to be the safest way to proceed, but I would welcome any thoughts before I take what seems like a giant step!

I am assuming I should wait for a run or good weather, but would also welcome any advice on the right window for this to be done!

Thanks

[stechad]

You could do it either way, but as you already have a demaree set-up then your first option is the easiest and they are probably mostly young bees in the top brood which is what you want, keep a nice big queen cell, just done that with 1 of my colonies.

[AdamD]

You could either take off a nuc or the whole box - or take off a couple of nucs if you wanted. I would be inclined to shake an extra frame of bees in, if you are making up a nuc as some bees will go back - even if it's mostly nurse bees that you hope are present in the top brood box.

[Zombee]

Many thanks for the helpful suggestions. Not having done this before I’m also wondering what happens if it doesn’t work out, and they don’t produce a queen or she fails to return from her mating flight. Would you just put them back on the original hive, and try again later? Or give them another frame with a new queen cell (or eggs) to try again?

(I don’t know if putting them back would create any conflict, or would they happily integrate?)

[Patrick]

Hi

Yes they should reintegrate without a problem. A sheet of newspaper between the two parts is the normally recommended method.

But your split is most likely to be successful anyway