Beekeeping- How to Snelgrove a Honeybee hive, Part 4 of 4

The final video, Part 4 of 4, on how to Snelgrove (Double Screen Board) a honeybee hive. Videos are filmed in real time with me slowing down the process to explain the steps involved.

[@jtelander]

This series is very helpful. Thanks.

[@jlhomestead954]

Looks like a great method. Thanks for making video.

[@robertchristian1664]

There must be uncapped queen cells placed in the top box and no queen cells at all in the bottom box for this to work. thxs for the video i found it very useful

[@markspc1]

The Snelgrove board is a complicated time consuming method and not necessary. If you want to tap into the warmth of the lower hive then use a double screen board but with one fixed entrance for the top hive. There are 1000% more efficient ways to raise a queen.

[@StephenBiggers]

Great video! I really want to try this. How successful is this? Last year I had to go through every frame once a week to remove queen cells. Very labor intensive. Most people I know tell me just to split hives but I'm interested in producing more honey. We have a limited honey flow in Texas so I need to prevent swarms but have strong hives.

[@6acrefarmstead224]

Stephen Biggers it’s worked pretty well for me and if you have a really nice hive, you can save the genetics with a quality queen or queens from that same hive to “bank” I plan on making a few 2 frame queen mating nucs to keep these queens. Also, you may have to stay on top of your hive during swarm season and Snelgrove more than once to prevent that hive from swarming. Always try to stay on top of an over crowded hive and you can do what you can to remove that swarm tendency. Just make sure they have plenty of room to lay brood and plenty of room to store honey and you will increase your success rate.

[@fergieferguson2457]

After hive inspection found 2 marked queens in one hive,now I did have a dead out was a weak split,they’ve been in same colony probably well over a month one is in deep 10 frame laying good,capped brood,nectar,pollen,open brood no queen cells..other is in med box same thing going on. I did put a queen extruded between them,I’ve built 2 of them boards but wondering if I can just do it with them 2 queens.

[@6acrefarmstead224]

Well if you're in the US, you have a good candidate for making a decent hive split. Having more than one hive is always a good thing, especially if you need to pull frames of brood from one hive to bolster the other. In this case, you have a deep hive and a medium hive setup potentially. I guess before I can help you further, it would all depend on what hive configurations you want to end up with. If this were me, I would split the hives and build from there. I run a majority of deep hive body setups but I do have one 3 medium box hive setup that I plan to split it into another medium hive setup this spring. Why I am doing this, because I am learning the pros and cons of different hive setups and also if I decide to sell medium nucs and there is a market for them (which there is where I live), I will have another product to market. This would be a good concept for a future video on what to do but right now, I need the time to make said video. Uhhh. I have a lot to present this spring with at least 5 plus ideas in my head to get 2019 started. If you need additional info in another reply, I will do my best to answer quickly. With my main job, I can check my messages a bit more often but I don't have the time right now to throw a video together. It may take a few messages, but I will do my best to give you some good direction.

[@Diypics]

Why don't you want the top hive to have foragers?

[@6acrefarmstead224]

DIYMarta - the top will always have some foragers. When you do the Abel grove entrance change, the returning bees on that days flight will go to the bottom. Bees usually bringing resources are generally accepted by the colony quicker. When the entrance is changed up top, the bees departing complete a new orientation that once they come back to the new upper entrance, they are starting the cycle of foraging. In my experience, the top box which was mainly brood to start with has plenty of backfilled pollen and nectar for once the new queen emerges up top, she has plenty of food for her new colony. Usually, by the time she starts laying, I have already pulled her and a few frames of stores and bees and made a new nuc from it.

[@Diypics]

@@6acrefarmstead224 And after making a nuc you remove the snelgrove board?

[@6acrefarmstead224]

yes I do. I let the hive become queenless for a few days then I will remove the snelgrove and "newspaper" the two boxes together with the queenright box on the bottom. The frames I took out to make a nuc I try and replace with frames of drawn out comb or foundation frames. So to put it all back together. I use hive base, queenright hive body, newspapersheet, queenless hive body, queen excluder, honeysupers, inner cover and hive lid.

[@Diypics]

@@6acrefarmstead224 Now I see. Thank you!

[@bonniejoseph9774]

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