Splitting hives

 If conditions exist to allow a hive to expand the bees will eventually outgrow their home. At that point they create a new queen and then the old queen and about 2/3rds of the worker bees will leave (or swarm) to find a new home. There are several ways to discourage this but in our case we want to expand the number of hives we have so we’ll use a technique called splitting, basically splitting one hive into two hives, before swarming occurs. To determine if a hive is preparing to swarm we inspect the hive frames to look for queen swarm cells (more on this below). 

There are multiple ways to split a hive, but our preferred method is the walk away split. This is essentially dividing up the hive resources as equally as possible into two new hives. The resources would be frames of bees, pollen, nectar, and brood. One of the new hives will contain the queen, the hive that doesn’t will raise a new queen. 

Fortunately, 6 of our 7 hives (colonies) made it through the winter in good shape. We’re not sure why the hive that failed did fail as it still had food remaining and did not appear to fall victim to disease or infestation. 

Preparation for spring basically involves, in our case at least, removal of insulation and mouse guards, inspecting the hives, and providing food if necessary to promote brood rearing so the hive gets off to a strong start. We have also prepared boxes for six additional hives that we'll get from splitting the current hives in addition to lots of supers (honey collection boxes) for what we hope is our biggest harvest so far.

We assembled and painted about 30 new hive boxes over the winter in anticipation of expanding our hive numbers in the spring. We think that bees prefer elaborately painted hive boxes over plain wood or white boxes and that this leads to improved honey production (we have no proof of this and we have no plans to confirm). We also think the elaborately painted boxes lead to an improved overall sense of wellbeing, maybe not for the bees but definitley for the person painting the boxes:). 

You may have heard in the news about recent increases in hive collapse or colony loss for commercial beekeepers. Normal colony loss among commercial beekeepers is 40%-50% but this year it is expected to be 60%-70%. There are a lot of theories about why this is happening. If you’d like to know more, please check out the article at this link https://news.wsu.edu/news/2025/03/25/honey-bee-colony-declines-grow-as-wsu-researchers-work-to-fight-losses/ 

 Bee hives will eventually get infested with a parasite called the Varroa mite. If left untreated the Varroa will weaken and destroy the hive. We regularly check our hives for Varroa and if the mite infestation is sufficient, we treat with either Oxalic acid vapor or Formic acid. Oxalic acid is an organic compound found in nature within many plants, including vegetables, leafy greens, fruits, nuts, and seeds while formic acid is an organic acid that is naturally present within honeybee colonies. There are other non-organic treatments available but we’ve had good success with these treatments so far and like the idea of treating with naturally occurring substances. There is an enormous amount of information available online if you’d like to learn more about the Varroa mite and the available treatments. I’ve included a few links below.

For Oxalic acid treatment. We use a device from  Lorob Bees called InstantVap to apply the treatment. The device heats the acid to create a vapor that is then injected into the hive. Each treatment only takes a few minutes. 

For the Formic acid treatment we use a product called Formic Pro. These are pads saturated with the acid solution that are placed in the hive directly on top of the frames. The treatment takes 14 or 20 days depending on the process you use.

https://lorobbees.com/

https://beelab.umn.edu/varroa-mites

https://nodglobal.com/what-makes-formic-acid-so-special/

https://www.perfectbee.com/a-healthy-beehive/threats-to-bees/a-beekeepers-guide-to-using-oxylic-acid

Raising bees involves specific activities for each season. During the fall we started monitoring the food stores to make sure the bees had enough to make it through the winter. To do this you can either inspect the hives to see how much honey is stored or you can lift the hive to estimate its weight. A double 8 frame brood hive should weigh about 80 ibs going into winter (bees + hives + honey). We estimate weight by lifting the back of the hive up off of the stand. We’re not totally confident yet in our ability to estimate if the bees have enough food so we decided to feed. 

We started feeding a simple syrup (2 parts sugar to 1 part water by weight) in early fall.  We added a supplement called HoneyBee Healthy to the syrup that is thought to stimulate feeding. This stuff is expensive and you can find recipes online to make your own for a fraction of the cost. Once daytime temperatures reach the mid fifties (Fahrenheit) it’s generally advised to stop feeding syrup and switch to a sugar brick if feeding is still necessary. 

We weren’t certain if our bees had enough food stores after feeding the syrup, so we decided to supplement their existing stores with sugar bricks for a little insurance. 

For feeding syrup we use an inverted canning jar with a bunch of small holes (maybe 1/16th of an inch dia.) punched in the lid. The jars are placed in a wooden stand so the bees can access the syrup as it slowly drips through the holes. The feeder is placed in an empty hive box that is placed on top of the brood hive where most of the bees live. Our bees were typically consuming 1-2 quarts of syrup per week. There are a lot of different feeder types available. The jars are nice because they are easy to clean and you can check syrup levels at a glance.

The sugar bricks we use for overwinter feeding are primarily sugar with a small amount of water. It’s also common to add vinegar to prevent mold growth and certain essential oils thought to stimulate feeding. We place the bricks in a wooden frame with a screened bottom that sits on top of the hive brood frames. Click on Hone on this website to find a detailed description for starter bee hives. A good instructional article on how to make the bricks is here: https://wildreidranch.com/diy-sugar-brick-recipe-for-bees/