What could be better than a hive full of bees? How about two hives full of bees? Splitting one colony into two (or more) is a great way to increase your hive numbers, and also a good way to prevent swarming. You can use many different techniques to split a colony, but all methods lead to the same final result: one colony becomes multiple colonies. Explore this brief guide to splitting hives to learn why beekeepers choose to split, the best time to split a colony, and three methods for how to divide your bees.
Why do beekeepers split colonies?
Splitting a colony in spring helps satisfy your bees' instinct to swarm while giving you control over the fates and locations of both the old and new colonies. Some splitting methods even allow you to pull multiple small colonies out of a single large one, producing perhaps 5 small nucleus hives from one colony. For some beekeepers, it's a matter of increasing colony numbers rather than preventing swarming: overwinter colony losses might turn a 10-hive apiary into a 3-hive apiary, and if more colonies aren't either made or purchased, another bad year could leave you with no colonies at all. For many of us, it's a mix of both swarm prevention and colony expansion.
Preventing swarming — an instinctual behavior in healthy colonies — is a constant negotiation between bees and beekeeper. Splitting lets us remove excess bees, full brood frames, and perhaps even the old queen to relieve the many cues that tell a full colony that it's time to swarm. Since splitting is akin to swarming, you shouldn't try to divide a colony that is too small: don't try to split a brand new package or a nuc you ordered this year, or you'll wind up with dead colonies and no honey to show for it.
How do you know when to split a colony?
Any colony that came through the winter strong and full of bees may be a great candidate for splitting. But before you start splitting all of your strong colonies, keep in mind that two small colonies will not make as much honey as a single large one. There are economies of scale that make it easier for a large colony to collect more nectar and manufacture more harvestable honey. Of course, if you split this year and keep both colonies alive through the winter you'll wind up with two large honey-producing colonies next year.
Bottom line: Evaluate your need for more colonies and more honey, now and in the future, and then strike the balance that feels right for you.
Three methods for how to split bee hives
When splitting your bee colony, there are three main methods to choose from: walk-away splits, using existing queen cells in your split, or purchasing a new queen when you split your colony. Explore the steps for each method and select the option that best suits your apiary needs.
1. Walk-away splits
By far the simplest way to split a colony is to perform a walk-away split. In this method, you separate one hive full of bees into two hives, leaving the queen in one and prompting the queenless colony to produce a new queen.
Walk-away split pros: The upside of this method is that it's very easy to do — just pull some bees, brood, and food from a healthy colony and put it into an empty hive, and the split has begun. Using this method, it's not even strictly necessary to know which of the two hives was left with the original queen.
Walk-away split cons: Unfortunately, there are a number of downsides to this easy method. A walk-away split may be the easiest way to split a colony, but it's also the slowest and probably the riskiest, so it's far from the best method available. The colony that winds up with no queen must:
- Recognize that they are queenless and start raising emergency replacement queens
- Raise those larval queens to adulthood
- Survive the risky process of young queens fighting each other until only one survives
- Allow the new queen to mature and develop in the hive
- Allow her to fly out on (potentially dangerous) nuptial flights to mate with drones
- Allow her some time before she starts laying eggs in earnest
No new eggs will be laid during that process, and even once the new queen begins laying it will take three additional weeks for her new workers to emerge from their cells as adult bees, and perhaps three more weeks before they're ready to start foraging outside the hive. Under even the best of circ*mstances, a broodless period of many weeks is likely during this kind of split.
Because of the long gap in worker production, beekeepers that use this technique will often transplant some bees into the requeening colony by removing a frame of capped worker brood from a strong colony and inserting it into the requeening colony a few weeks after the split.
If you’d prefer to reduce the risk of failure and increase the quantities of bees and honey that your colonies can produce, consider an alternative to the walk-away split method.
2. Queen cell splits
Photo by Franz Schmid on Pixabay.
One straightforward splitting method that can significantly shorten the requeening process involves using queen cells taken from a colony that is preparing to swarm. New queens raised in walk-away splits may be small and weak unless the queenless colony has a very large number of young, royal-jelly-producing workers.
Instead of having the queenless colony rear their own queen, a beekeeper can simply remove a capped queen cell (or a frame with a single queen cell on it) and carefully insert it into the new queenless hive. Since the best hives to split are also the big hives most likely to swarm in the spring, you can often make a split with queen cells taken from the same colony as the bees themselves. Queen cells from unrelated hives can also be used with few problems since bees are unlikely to reject any queen that emerges from a capped cell into their hive.
3. Purchased queen splits
Photo by Matthew Greg on Pixabay.
Even quicker and often more reliable than walk-away and queen cell splits, this third method gives your queenless split a ready-made, purchased queen. Such a queen should arrive mature, mated, and ready to lay eggs. A caged queen inserted into a queenless split might be released from her cage within 3 days, and should lay her first eggs almost immediately. This means that the colony will suffer much less downtime, and should have a relatively short broodless period. For three weeks, the emerging brood will have been laid by the old queen. Then, there might be a gap of a few days before workers laid by the new queen start to emerge.
New queens are typically affordable and can be ordered during spring and summer from Betterbee. There is some risk that the split will reject the queen as a foreigner, but this is usually the only major downside to this technique. Before trying this method, read up on how to make splits receptive to being requeened and or how to ensure a happy introduction between your split and your newly purchased queen.
Buying new queens will introduce new genetics to your apiary since the queen and the drone sperm she carries will be from whichever queen supplier sold her. This is typically an easy way to introduce new genetics into your apiary, letting you reap the benefits of your queen supplier's breeding efforts.
Splitting a colony requires that you pay attention to your bees, and even with the best possible beekeeping techniques, a split can still fail. However, if you don’t split large colonies, they may swarm. If you have strong colonies that have survived through at least one winter, it may make sense to turn one colony into two (or more) with one of these recommended splitting methods. If you have questions about splitting — or anything else bee-related — contact us at Betterbee or check out our Online Beekeeping Guide! We love helping good beekeepers become even better beekeepers.
