Never having seen a the results of a split before, I have always been hesitant, but fascinated to try one. When my last hive, Sandy, didn’t make it though the winter, I needed to secure bees late in the buying cycle. Luckily, a fellow Cape Cod beekeeper came to my aid, saying he’d split one of his hives and get me going. I jumped at the opportunity, both to have native bees, and to see a split done first hand.

For those still getting up to speed, a split, in its simplest terms, is taking a healthy hive and dividing it in two; the other half going into a new hive. One half gets the existing queen, and the other half, sensing it’s queen-less, makes a new queen.

This all sounds very logical and easy, but there’s much more involved, and much of it revolves around making a new queen. Consider that the queen-less part of the split needs to have young eggs that are just the right age for the workers to pick a few to turn into queens (they often make 7 or 8 at once to ensure at least one lives). If the eggs are too old, they can’t be made into queens, so timing the split when there it enough young brood is essential. Then you have to make sure there is enough capped brood for a new generation of workers to raise the queen. Oh, and better make sure there are honey stores there too, as the workers will be concentrating on making a new queen and not on making honey. Clearly, making a split is part art and part science. It is not, as many books will tell you, just pulling half the frames out of a colony and moving them to a new hive.

That being said, splits are traditional way of  creating bees for an additional hive, as well as swarm prevention. When done correctly they work well, as pictured above. Of the three colonies, the left two are packages from Georgia. The right is a split that is growing so fast I needed to add another super of frames for them to grow into.

It seems that I’m now a split believer.

May is often a busy month for beekeepers, and it has been for me. I’ve installed a split from a fellow Cape Cod beekeeper (thanks Bruce!), and two packages from Georgia.

As you know, I really don’t like packages from Georgia, specifically for their lack of genetics that will help them survive New England winters. But, I had trouble securing additional local bees, so in order for me to up the ante and have three hives this summer, I needed to supplement with non-local bees.

A package is in front of one of the hives as I couldn’t get all the bees out of it, and I knew they would follow their queen inside after a few hours. I had to leave for Boston soon after I installed the packages, so I can only cross by fingers and hope they are doing well before my next visit.

On the hive on the left, I placed the package inside the hive and opened it, a technique for a less traumatizing installation. Unfortunately that didn’t work well for the middle hive as the queen cage broke loose and a bit of chaos started, forcing me to put their package outside after I fished out the queen and placed her inside.

No matter how long you’re a beekeeper, you still learn things about bees and pollination that surprise you, especially this Spring Harvest.

A quick inspection of the Sandy hive on Dec 30, 2013 showed a happy colony that had barely even touched the sugar I left for them. Since bees prefer their own honey to human processed sugar, this means they have plenty of their own honey to eat which was always my intent.

A few seconds after lifting the mountain camp feeder above, they started to surge out of the frames, clearly fearing an attack. I quickly snapped this picture, and carefully replaced the feeder above, strapping the whole hive down as I do year round.

While we’ve had a reasonably mild winter so far, the ladies are looking healthy and happy; hopefully ready for a split late this spring. And now, as beekeepers have done in colder climates for hundreds of years, I patiently wait for spring when I’ll check on them again.

Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey

My bees are pretty gentile.  I often waltz up to the hives and put my ear to the back of the brood nest and listen for a the swish without any protection. As long as I don’t mess with their entrance, and don’t open the hive, they ignore me. The worst I ever get is a bee bump, telling me that it’s time to leave – and I do.

But today, just as I stood observing the hives at 15 feet, I was attacked by a solitary bee. She came out of nowhere, started dive bombing my face, and in a few seconds, made her target and stung me on my cheekbone.

Now I’ve heard honey bees are more aggressive in the fall, as they become more protective of their honey stores and their babies. I’ve even heard of a normaly gentle hive having an alter ego in the fall, but it’s 80F and a sunny day outside, hardly fall in New England. I didn’t come close to the hive, and I certainly didn’t block their entrance or open it up.

In the few seconds before she stung, I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t there to mess with the babies. I wasn’t going to steal their honey.  I’d even be happy to back off another 15 feet. Geez, woman, I’m the guy that fed your colony all last winter – remember? What did I do?

As I sat thinking todays event over, and their attitude over the past week when I was in the hive for an inspection, I think it must be due to the time of year.

Note to self – Always wear protection when approaching the hive in the fall. Ouch.

Side note: My wife and son were stung yesterday by a bumble bee gone out of control. She stung my son outside, jumped on me as we quickly went into the house, and when I shooed her away, dive bombed my wife inside and outside the house.  The bumble bee finally met her demise outside, under my shoe. What is it with bees and the fall?

When I checked on my bees two weeks ago, the hedge in my backyard was about three to four feet tall. Being that most of these bushes were planted last fall and thus just getting started this spring, I didn’t expect them to be doing very well. I knew any new landscaping would take time to settle in, and I was prepared to wait. What I wasn’t prepared for was this: bushes over six feet high and budding fruit on some of the trees in just two weeks.

As I sat their pondering why the bushes were doing so well (Was it the soil? The salt air?), my wife gently pointed out – “it’s your bees, Dave”. Our landscape architect, a former beekeeper, nodded in agreement. Clearly I wasn’t seeing the big picture.

Focused on the health of my bees, I had forgotten that bees are opportunists, and a close pollen/nectar source gets visited more often. And so, this line of bushes in the flight path of my hives (they’re on the right side, buried behind the bushes) gets a lot of TLC from my bees. They’re close, they’re almost all “bee friendly” plants, and I’m reaping the benefits. Or the plants are. Or the bees. Funny how an ecosystem spreads the love.

So the next time you see your neighbors, quote the children’s rhyme, and ask them “How does your garden grow?”. My guess is their bumper-crop will coincide with the arrival of your first colony. Frost said, “Good fences make good neighbors”, but I’d rather keep my neighbors happy by helping out their garden with my bees.

Today I installed my second hive, and put it both hives on my new stand (more about that in another post). On the left is the new hive named Sunny which came as a three frame nuc, and has a syrup feeder hidden under the top two medium supers. My original hive, named Sandy is on the right, clearly taller as it is a thriving colony. As long as I was going to change things around on the ladies, I thought I’d go the extra step of converting Sandy to a top entrance as well. I’ll do the same for Sunny when I get more time in the wood shop (a.k.a the corner of my garage) and can build another ventilated super.

More on this new hive over the coming weeks.