Using swarm cells to split a bee hive.

Hello Mr. Ed, today is March 18, 2021, we are here at the abbey and in the back where we probably have around I don't know, maybe about 20 highs here and this morning, do you know what we are? We are doing this morning, we are doing divisions or at least we are going to try to do divisions. We've been trying to do

split

s for two weeks now, but it just hasn't worked for us because when we open our boxes. In one of the boxes there aren't enough bees to be able to

split

the way I like to do splits and there are and there aren't um we haven't found any queen

cells

in them and I want to do my splits

using

swarm

cells

.

So today it's been two weeks since I've been looking at them and I really hope that today we find some cells in them. So why do we make a division? The reason we make a division. It's very simple. I don't want our bees to

swarm

if you want your bees to swarm don't worry they don't want to do anything they will swarm and everything will be fine but since I want I want to do two things I want to grow bees and I want to make honey those are the two things I want achieve and to do that I need to divide the bees because I need the bees and then I need to divide the bees because then that increases our honey production too so there is a reason why I do it but people raise bees for whatever reason they want , so if you have a clear idea of ​​what you want to do and how you want to do it well, then it's a bit easier to choose the direction you want to go when the sun is around eight in the morning, the sun is just in my eyes, up there, so I'm squinting trying to get it out of my eyes and it's a little cold.

This morning we had a really massive front movement last night around midnight. It rained a lot last night and right after that rain the temperatures just dropped. We were running at 80 85 degrees most of this week and here today. On Thursday our temperature right now is 50 to 53 degrees, something like that, it's cold and the wind is blowing, but it's still warm enough that we can get into our

hive

s and start looking for ourselves, so that's what What are we going to do today. we're going to open our boxes and because we did our rotations in January, in the rotations what we do is we take our top box and move it down and the bottom box up and the reason we do that is because by then the bees They have gone through all the warehouses in the bottom box and are now in the top box, so we want to place the bees below the empty box and then allow the bees to move up. in the box like this and that way at this time of year going on, which is almost six weeks after we do our rotations, we should have two boxes of bees and ideally what we will find is that we will open our box and you will see six seven boxes of bees in both the top box and the bottom box and then hopefully we'll find queen cells 95 percent of the time, when we open our box our queen has moved to our top box.

The top box is where she is almost 95 percent of the time, so when I open the box, that's where I'll look for swarm cells in the top box, there may be swarm cells in the bottom box, but it's very unlikely, but I still check those too because what I want to do is take these frames that have the swarm cells in them and I want to transfer them from the box that has a queen to the box that doesn't have a queen and that way I can do a split, I'll remove the box that has a queen, I will take it out of that box from where the original

hive

is and then that way we will divide the bees that were in the queen.

The field bees that were in the queen box are going to return to the original vision box and that number of bees will swell, while the bees in the queen box are going to decrease and that will somewhat slow it down. If you want to swarm the bees in the bottom box since they don't have a queen, all they are going to do is bring the nectar and the soup, the food, the numbers won't grow in that one, but there will be a lot of bees there bringing resources, so Charlie is here with me today Charlie is back there oh yeah I'm here Charlie is here with me filming and um and he's also here with me to help me move some of these boxes. by the grace of God we will move on, we will go finish this, yes we have about 60 of them to do here at the abbey and hopefully we will have them finished at least tomorrow, are you ready, I'm ready, come on, let's discuss, It took us about 20 boxes to finally find a very good example of a covered swarm cell, we have come across many of them that were still developing, there was, there was royal jelly. but there was no larva, but here on this one you can see that the cap is clearly visible on this one, as well as on this one here and I saw another one too, uh, this one just doesn't have a cap, but but and then it does. here it is here is the other cabin here so we have two really good frames that we can split and we are going to take these two frames out we will put one in this box and we will have another one to do another split in the future now I will say this we had a wave really severe cold weather that occurred about three weeks ago and it just knocked out the bees for a while and that's why we're seeing this.

Late development for us, normally our boxer would be full of these one cell caps, but right now these things are very hard to get and these are the ones I prefer to make in my divisions, there are three types of cells that bees make and they make a. a swarm cell, a swarm cell which you will find on the front of the frame and then an emergency cell and of the three types of cells, the swarm cell is the swarm cell and the replacement cell are the best types and the reason for that These cells were built to form a queen.

They are elongated and the main queen is the one who is really the big reason why the queen laid the egg inside this so that you have a fresh egg. We have an older egg, either a two or three day old egg that the emergence cells are made of, so the ideal is a swarm cell and a replacement cell or the best type of queen cells, so Let's take these swarm cells and do our divisions. with and one would think that the word swarm cell that these queens are going to come out and swarm, but no, they are not going to come out, they are going to know that there is no queen. in that hive and they will become the queen of that heat and the first queen that emerges, if I have more than one cell, she will go to that cell and kill that queen, so the first queen that emerges will be the queen of that height and we're going to move this box to the side, in fact, I'm just going to place it right next to this and any field bees in this box that can then go to this box.

Go ahead and do our division now, you'll notice that our bees are congregated in these one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, actually, six squares right here, these four squares right here, there aren't even any bees in this, like this What are we going to throw away? some of these boxes to give us space to get to these boxes here and then we're going to transfer a box from the side that the bees are working on here, so we're going to keep that balance, so I'm going to move this box, look in this box to our queen, take out these two frames that have our cells, transfer one here and then we're going to move one to another box, now when you open that inner cover, I'll see a lot more bees now besides this, I just want to check this for make sure our queen isn't up here and since she's not here, I'm going to bounce these bees into this box and now let's go ahead and delete some of those empty frames on this outside here that way we're definitely not going to damage our cells.

We don't want to do that, okay, we've removed three frames now we're going to go frame by frame and we're going to look for our and we're actually going to look for her in a frame that has newly laid brood, I mean, it could be anywhere in the hive. , but that's usually where you'll find her and that's really The way you know you have a queen is by the number or if there are any offspring in your box again. These are all frames of nectar and honey, so there are enough reserves here for the bees, that's for sure, and that's how I understood it and what I've done.

I have seen that the box that has the queen cells, the swarm cells, that is the box that your queen is in, look at this, we have, look at these beautiful cells up here, these two cells here are on the face of the frame and that would tell me that these cells here are replacement cells, in other words these bees were preparing to replace this queen, these are replacement cells and this cell here is a swarm cell, so we have two different types of cells in the same frame, so it's really a great find here. I can try to cut out one of these cells, probably this cell here and try to use it separately in a split, but this really tells me that these bees. we were getting ready to have a new queen, oh look, and then in the back, another replacement cell right here, yes, this queen was going to be replaced and there will definitely be a new queen in this box, as well as another replacement cell. and this is a swarm of cells right at the bottom, these are beautiful beautiful cells that must be an inch and a quarter of an inch and a half long, beautiful cells, so that's the fifth one that we've seen, the fourth one that we've seen. seen in At this point it doesn't really matter finding your queen because she's going to be replaced anyway look at these beautiful swarm cells here let's go ahead and look at this chart right now okay so what are we going to do at this? space right here we're going to take the frame that has the two replacement cells actually the three replacement cells and we're going to drop this frame here now I know there's another replacement cell there and we're going to keep that one there too, so here's another replacement cell and a faint, so we'll keep both cells there.

Remember that the first one that hatches and it will be this one because it has a limit, this one is not. she'll come and kill that one, as well as that old queen here, so what I'm going to do is keep this frame as a spare as I go, we've got a really nice warm cell. Here this one has no lid and I can't tell if there is a larva in there or not. We have one of them here, so that's enough. We can split this frame to eliminate the bees. this one put this one on the side there are tons of bees around here let's go ahead and close this one now okay now we've taken a frame out of here so we need to replace this frame and the frame that I do the division of another hive that will go here, like this that we've done our division, we've done our division, replacing cells in this one, storm cells in this one and replacing cells, so that's a good division right there. so that's all I have for you on this one so thanks for watching keep watching we'll do more god bless good time charlie and mr reed that's the thread we're out until the next video.

I want to show you a trick that I learned while doing my splits

using

swarm cells and you can see that this formula is okay here, look at this, all these swan shells and if I don't want to use that frame, I want to cut those cells. but the problem with cutting the swarm cells is that you cut the back of them and then they are no longer useful so I learned a little bit of technique and I would like to share it with you and it's really just a woodworking skill that I know woodworking and that's using the grain of the wood to work to your advantage, so what I'm going to do, let me show you exactly what I'm going to do.

I like to use that knife for filleting and the reason I like to use that safety knife, it's long and thin and because it's long and thin, I can get into that frame a little bit deep. You could use a utility knife, a pocket knife, whatever you want, but I think using this fillet knife works really well and we. We're going to focus on this cell here, that's the one we're going to focus on and because the bees attach the cell to the wood, when you try to cut that cell, it exposes the lava inside or the royal jelly. and it makes the cell useless so the trick I do now and it works almost every time is to put my knife right on top of the cell and carve the wood and then cut down and don't go too far from the edge keeping very close to that edge and that cell will just pop out and bond to the wood.

See how I do this. I put my knife on top of the cell and I cut through the wood maybe just about a sixteenth of an inch and as I cut so deep and then I start going down and I'm just shaving that wood very smooth and look what comes out of there and it's going to be perfectly fine. good. Look, when you see royal jelly or larva, you see a little. piece of wood now that the cell is ready to drop into another box and do another division, which is a really cool little trick. Next, I'm going to cut this whole line right here, this is where that long blade is nice because I'm going to go inside that wax and cut it all off, look at that now, yeah, that's just there's a drone right there, so none of our queen cells was damaged and we removed them now, there are many queen cellsswarm there, let's put them in the box, so what's the reason why?

Am I doing the divisions well? I have those bees, they didn't like that.