Making New Bees! Splits in a Commercial Operation

[@charlesoneill466]

Great video.

[@axeno9010]

I've read before about Texas splits. Finally got to see one! Thank you!

[@aCanadianBeekeepersBlog]

I like the process

[@beefarmerjake]

Thanks! Sure makes it move quick!

[@stevesoutdoorworld4340]

Great job ! I like the way you guys roll!😁

[@beefarmerjake]

Thanks for watching!

[@timbervalleyhomestead]

This is wild. I can’t wrap my head around a stack of 7.

[@beefarmerjake]

😂

[@MikeBarryBees]

I’ve seen something similar by a commercial beekeeper in Lumberton, MS, but never this particular process. Interesting. Everyone tailors their process for their operation. Cool, thanks for sharing.

[@beefarmerjake]

Not sure where the concept even came from. My dad taught me. I’ll have to ask him who he learned it from. Works very well for us.

[@allsmilz7234]

​@@beefarmerjake - Gunter honey from N. Dakota started doing this way of splitting 50 + years ago.

[@elznerfarms]

I'd need a ladder to get those top boxes unstacked lol Love the step up method though for sure. Hope y'all got everything set in place this week. Bring on the good mating weather!

[@beefarmerjake]

Yeah I let the guys do that last one haha. That rain set us back a bit on 5-600 but everything else is sitting good! Now just praying for good mating weather and successful tallow bloom!

[@KajunHomestead]

Awesome bee yard❤👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[@beefarmerjake]

Thanks!

[@sotirisfman1917]

dude watching from greece crete island.. cant understand anything sry,, here i m adding seconds now, for drawing new frames,, also want to make splits till may that is dry period, can u suggest or better describe what happened in the video ;-) i manage 30 bees thanks and keep beekeeping

[@ricksutton2902]

That is the best way of doing it but if you have the help to do it you're right it's a lot of work

[@beefarmerjake]

So much work 🤣

[@ssmith517]

Jake could you use that method of splitting and introduce a mated caged queen?

[@beefarmerjake]

I bet you could. Might need to wait a bit longer to introduce her. I have never tried it.

[@geckoproductions4128]

So you give the stacks time to kill off all the queens then separate the boxes and add new queens for a split......did I get that right? Thanks

[@beefarmerjake]

Thats it!

[@beekeepinggarden165]

Great method 👌🐝 super yard 👌🐝🍯

[@beefarmerjake]

Thank you! It is a solid yard

[@beekeepinggarden165]

How many Hives your running in operation?🤔

[@beefarmerjake]

Around 3000

[@shawnboutersebouterseurban387]

Are you sitting just the bottom 2 boxes and using the rest as confusion spacers?

[@beefarmerjake]

I’m not following what you’re asking… they all get stacked down at night to singles on 4 way pallets.

[@so_cal_mom]

Cool intro!

[@beefarmerjake]

Thanks!

[@ReederBeekeeping]

Where did you learn this? What % of old queens die?

[@beefarmerjake]

My dad taught me! Will have to ask him where it came from. I don’t have any official study on it but it seems 95%+ based on what the boxes look like putting cells in.

[@BucksBeesS.C.]

When you put new queen cell in it takes 30 days to get the cycle going again or am I missing something

[@BucksBeesS.C.]

Or are they mated queens not cells?

[@beefarmerjake]

You are correct. These will be building right before or at the beginning of the start of our flow, which is why they will only make half a crop. (Keep in mind this video is prob a week and a half behind the work)

[@kipglass6222]

Jake, you never really said where your double stacks of 7 came from? Did you just break down the whole colonies of 4 on the the pallet and stacked them that high?

[@beefarmerjake]

We break down everything, make up a single the way we want it, and stack 7 because that’s really the highest we can stack without issues.

[@kipglass6222]

@@beefarmerjake But you are stacking up all 4 queen right colonies that are on the pallet. correct? Or maybe two pallets worth of queen right colonies onto one pallet?

[@beefarmerjake]

In this method, I don’t care about the queens at all. 90% of them get killed in the process by other bees and queens. All I care about is boxes of bees and brood.

[@TexasGuy]

About my third time through this video. Just makes sense. Are you treating capped brood and open brood the same way when mixing/matching? If yes, does the queen cell being introduced the next day usually prevent the new colony from trying to make their own queen, or do you still have to go in and knock down unwanted queen cells X days later in every single box? Or are you relying on the emerging queen to find misc queen cells throughout?

[@beefarmerjake]

This causes so much confusion I think it prevents them from making a cell quickly. We’re mostly focused on capped brood and then we’ll mix in everything else

[@lasource811]

I have put different boxes with different queens together in a flow and they have always taken to one queen especially if there are more than two different colonies and lots of confusion. What makes them kill all the queens in your operation?

[@beefarmerjake]

We mix up brood before we stack. Creates a sort of managed chaos. Also this is not done during a flow. Quite a bit different than combining colonies.

[@crazyreadr21]

do you put in virgin queens or mated? do you breed your own queens?

[@beefarmerjake]

Cells in the spring, mated in the summer. Everything is bought.

[@queenveeshoney360]

Man I may do that next year with like 30 colonies just to try

[@beefarmerjake]

Definitely do!

[@walterhiegel3020]

Jake, That seems like a crazy process but makes a lot of sense. Are you doping 3 frames of brood so that you get to the numbers that you are shooting for or will you come back and do more splits later??

[@beefarmerjake]

3 frames is what we typically do every year with these!

[@tristonosborne5537]

When do you drop in your queen cells?

[@beefarmerjake]

The next day usually. It's a cycle of make splits>move them that night>put cells in the next day

[@paulgroth5414]

What size if split would be required to peak a week after your main flow starts? You mentioned 3 weeks, if a guy made a 5 frame split(brood) would that be strong enough in that 3 to 4 weeks until flow?

[@sherryortiz227]

Do you graft for your own queens or buy the cells?

[@beefarmerjake]

100% buy. This time of year is too fast for us to have time to graft. We would have to hire someone dedicated to grafting.

[@heavymechanic2]

I do queen grafting on a small scale, Jake would need another bee yard and other equipment in addition to more employees to manage his queen operation.

[@beefarmerjake]

Absolutely! It would most likely cost us more than we spend to buy cells to just graft for our own operation.

[@sterlingknight83]

I've never done it that way, but think I will try it. I have about 140 hives now and want to double my numbers after the honey flow. Seems like an easy way to requeen for the next season. Thanks!

[@beefarmerjake]

I haven’t done this method post honey flow. Not to say that it can’t work, but it’s certainly will be more difficult to build bees depending on your area.

[@sterlingknight83]

@Jake Moore I'm in N.W. Georgia. I'll pull honey in the middle to end of June, then split and pour on the feed. We'll see how it goes.

[@geraltofrivia8529]

Confused as to why you'd want to lose brood patterns like the ones you displayed. But if you have the money to buy new queens I'm sure someone is very happy to take it. This is part of diminishing returns of a commercial operation I presume.

[@beefarmerjake]

The sad reality is queens (on average) don’t last much longer than a year in a migratory operation. While that is a great queen now, she may not be in 2 months. It’s a lot easier to re-queen now than later.

[@robmosher362]

Very interesting. Careful not to fall into the “um” trap when speaking.

[@beefarmerjake]

Lol. Thanks

[@yesdavidyes3777]

Would this increase the spread of diseases?

[@beefarmerjake]

If they had diseases, yes, but I keep stuff in check as much as I can:)