NAOBA held a colony division workshop in Sedona on Saturday, March 13. A strong colony of honeybees living in a "Golden Mean" hive with 18 top bars was looking very crowded, and we decided to open the hive and to divide or split the colony into a second colony. Because this overcrowded colony had not yet built any queen cells in anticipation of swarming, we decided to do a semi-"walkaway split" rather than an actual divide. Below is an update about this workshop, posted two weeks later on March 27, 2016:
Thanks to the eleven NAOBAns who attended our recent colony division workshop. Folks came from Flagstaff to Mesa and several places in between.
We raised $150.00 to go towards NAOBA's effort to gain status as an official 501 C-5. The workshop was also successful in terms of the bees. We decided to make a semi-"walkaway split" from this very strong Cordovan colony living in an overcrowded Golden Mean (18 top bar) hive.
The queen and about half of her daughters and half of the colony's combs were left in the original hive.
About half of the brood combs (with freshly laid eggs) and half of the bees were transferred into the "split," which was then taken to a new location several miles away (the organic apple orchard at Garland's Oak Creek Lodge).
Two weeks later, the mother hive still looks very strong, filling about 80 percent of the total hive volume. If the colony hadn't been divided, they would have quickly had far more bees than could have fit into that relatively small hive.
The split looks very strong, too. If they were able to create a new queen or queens, then she should be born in two or three more days. The timing was good (not intentional) because the apples bloomed right after the split was placed in the orchard. All that food makes it easier for the bees to build a strong queen.
The alternative to this walkaway split was to transfer the entire colony into a longer Golden Mean hive and to create space in the broodnest to encourage the bees not to swarm, but to continue expanding exponentially. Somewhat surprisingly, there were no queen cells in the overcrowded colony.
It will be interesting to see if the daughter colony succeeds in creating a new queen. If the colony does succeed, one wonders what her daughters will be like? Their temperament will be pretty much determined by the drones that she mates with (next week?), who will be both feral tropicals and domesticated temperates from another colony that I take care of at Garland's (to help with pollinating the orchards and vegetable gardens). In my own experience, most (but not all) first generation "open pollinated" queens from temperate stock create colonies that are significantly more defensive than their mother's colony. It is that way from Flagstaff to Sedona to Camp Verde.
With that extra jolt of defensiveness, however, often comes a new colony with stronger overall resilience and greater productivity than the original colony, especially in terms of surplus honey production.
Saludos,
P. Pynes, Ph.D.
President, NAOBA
Thanks to the eleven NAOBAns who attended our recent colony division workshop. Folks came from Flagstaff to Mesa and several places in between.
We raised $150.00 to go towards NAOBA's effort to gain status as an official 501 C-5. The workshop was also successful in terms of the bees. We decided to make a semi-"walkaway split" from this very strong Cordovan colony living in an overcrowded Golden Mean (18 top bar) hive.
The queen and about half of her daughters and half of the colony's combs were left in the original hive.
About half of the brood combs (with freshly laid eggs) and half of the bees were transferred into the "split," which was then taken to a new location several miles away (the organic apple orchard at Garland's Oak Creek Lodge).
Two weeks later, the mother hive still looks very strong, filling about 80 percent of the total hive volume. If the colony hadn't been divided, they would have quickly had far more bees than could have fit into that relatively small hive.
The split looks very strong, too. If they were able to create a new queen or queens, then she should be born in two or three more days. The timing was good (not intentional) because the apples bloomed right after the split was placed in the orchard. All that food makes it easier for the bees to build a strong queen.
The alternative to this walkaway split was to transfer the entire colony into a longer Golden Mean hive and to create space in the broodnest to encourage the bees not to swarm, but to continue expanding exponentially. Somewhat surprisingly, there were no queen cells in the overcrowded colony.
It will be interesting to see if the daughter colony succeeds in creating a new queen. If the colony does succeed, one wonders what her daughters will be like? Their temperament will be pretty much determined by the drones that she mates with (next week?), who will be both feral tropicals and domesticated temperates from another colony that I take care of at Garland's (to help with pollinating the orchards and vegetable gardens). In my own experience, most (but not all) first generation "open pollinated" queens from temperate stock create colonies that are significantly more defensive than their mother's colony. It is that way from Flagstaff to Sedona to Camp Verde.
With that extra jolt of defensiveness, however, often comes a new colony with stronger overall resilience and greater productivity than the original colony, especially in terms of surplus honey production.
Saludos,
P. Pynes, Ph.D.
President, NAOBA
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