Splitting For Exponential growth

Bees like to work the center of the hive, whether they're drawing wax, raising brood, or storing honey. This method of management takes advantage of that instinct to grow your hive count fast.

There are many ways to split bees. This is a method built for exponential growth. If you're trying to increase your hive count, this is a great way to manage your bees. If you're trying to produce honey instead, a different method will serve you better. The nice thing is you can apply this to all of your hives, or just a few.

Start With a Strong Queen

Remember, not all hives are equal. To get the most out of splitting, your hive should be headed by a queen that's a big brood producer. Italians and Carniolans are perfect. To keep this from getting complicated, I'll walk through it using just one hive.

Step 1: Build Up the Brood (60s and Warmer)

1. Once temperatures are consistently hitting the 60s, start your management. First you want the hive producing huge volumes of brood. Begin by rotating empty frames of drawn comb in between the frames of brood. Be careful in early spring, temperatures can still drop and the bees need to be able to cover all the brood.

2. Feeding pollen sub will help a lot. Feeding sugar syrup helps too, but don't overdo it or the hive will store the syrup instead of raising bees. Once you have about 8 frames of bees, you can begin splitting.

Step 2: Decide Queens vs. Queen Cells

If you use mated queens for your splits, you'll have better success. However, queens cost about 8 times as much as queen cells. Using queen cells helps a lot with Varroa treatment (see the last section). Queen cells are harder to come by unless you raise your own. Queen rearing is time consuming but totally worth it.

Step 3: Make the Splits

We'll assume our hive has 8 frames of brood. Confine the queen to a nuc box with 2 frames of brood and a frame of honey. Then separate the remaining 6 frames of brood and bees into 3 separate nuc boxes. The half frames of brood go on the outside with the brood facing in.

Here's the configuration each nuc box should have, edge to edge:

• Empty frame

• Frame of brood / honey / pollen

• Frame of brood

• Frame of honey / pollen

Add a frame of comb or foundation on the very outside, giving you a nuc with 4 frames plus a division board feeder. Division board feeders are best for this type of split because they sit inside the hive, which reduces robbing.

Step 4: Add the Queen and Wait

Wait a day before adding a queen cell or mated queen. If you added a mated queen, check back in a week to confirm she's laying. For queen cells, check back in 2 weeks. For any queens or cells that didn't take, spread those bees and brood among the successful splits. Once the queens are laying, give each nuc about a half gallon of syrup.

Step 5: Grow and Repeat

1. Once a nuc has grown to 4 frames, transfer it to a standard box.

2. If you used drawn comb, feed the nuc about 1 more gallon of syrup. Don't overfeed or they'll store it instead of raising bees.

3. Rotate frames of comb between the frames of brood. The queen will be forced to lay in them.

4. If you used foundation, you'll have to feed a lot. You can still rotate frames toward the center to get the bees to draw the foundation out faster.

5. How fast your hive grows depends on whether you used comb, a mated queen, or queen cells. For best results, use a mated queen and drawn comb.

Once a nuc has 5-6 frames of brood, you can split it again using the same method. Some nucs will be ready to split in a month; others in 2-3 months depending on your inputs. You can keep splitting until fall. I stop about 45 days before cold weather sets in, so the splits have enough time to grow into mature hives before winter.

What Kind of Growth Can You Expect?

Following this plan over a 6-month splitting window, you could increase to around 30 hives, depending on how well your splits took and how fast they grew. Not every climate has a safe 6-month splitting window, and this is not a strict recipe. All hives behave differently and many won't grow this fast. Apply it, adjust as you go, and you should get good results.

The Cost of Going All-In

If you followed this plan to the letter using mated queens, it gets expensive fast. Here's some quick math for a full buildout:

• 40 mated queens - $1,600

• 60 hive bodies - $900

• 30 bottom boards - $300

• 30 lids - $300

• 30 feeders - $150

• 250 gal. syrup - $859

• 240 frames - $720

• 80 lbs. pollen sub - $100

• Total: ~$4,929

We don't live in a perfect world, but with enough resources of mated queens and equipment, you can increase your hive count by a large factor in a single season.

Bonus: Build In Varroa Control

Using queen cells lets you fold Varroa management right into your splitting. As soon as the new queen begins laying, treat the hive with oxalic acid. Oxalic acid kills mites above the brood, and since there's no capped brood at that moment, you'll be able to kill almost all the mites. It's one of the most effective natural mite knockdowns you can get.

Questions about scaling up your apiary? Comment below or get in touch with Timber Creek Bees.