Today we were able to split our one hive into two new hives. This is so that we can grow a new queen and have more bees in case we lose any more in the winter.

 

It should also help stop the hives from swarming this year and then we won’t lose honey production.

This is the original hive. This hive now has no queen as we stole her to put her in the new hive. This hive still has:

• almost all of the bees
• all of the honey they have made this year
• almost all of the baby bees, eggs and larva.
• no queen

This hive will now create it’s own queen. we will check back in a few days to see how they are getting on with this.

This is hive number 2. This hive has:

• the queen which we stole from hive number one
• one frame of pollen
• a couple of frames of honey for the bees to feed the babies on
• only young bees less than 3 weeks old because all the old bees fly back to the old hive.
• a feeder to feed them sugar syrup until the young bees start collecting their own nectar.

 

Check back in a week to see how hive 1 is getting on growing a new queen and how the queen in hive 2 is getting on starting a new colony.