Once you’ve gained experience managing a single hive, you may consider expanding your apiary. Keeping multiple hives has several advantages: it can increase your honey yield, provide backup colonies in case one faces problems, and allow you to practice more advanced beekeeping techniques, such as queen rearing. However, expanding your operation requires careful planning, more resources, and increased management skills. This chapter outlines the steps involved in splitting hives, raising queens, and effectively managing multiple colonies.
1. Splitting Hives
Splitting a hive is a technique used to increase the number of colonies in your apiary and to prevent swarming in a strong colony. By taking bees and brood from a healthy, robust hive and transferring them to a new hive, you can create an entirely new colony. Splitting can also help you manage hive overcrowding, which is a common cause of swarming.
- When to Split a Hive:
- Splitting should ideally take place in late spring or early summer, when the original colony is strong, with plenty of brood and workers. This timing ensures that the new colony has enough time to build up before winter.
- If you notice signs of swarm preparation, such as the presence of swarm cells, this is another good time to split the hive. By splitting the hive, you simulate the natural process of swarming, which helps reduce the chances of losing part of your colony.
- How to Split a Hive:
- Step 1: Prepare a new hive with fresh frames and foundation. Position this hive a short distance away from the original colony.
- Step 2: Select a few frames of brood, including some with capped brood and others with eggs, as well as a few frames of honey and pollen. Be careful not to transfer the queen by accident—check the frames thoroughly before moving them.
- Step 3: Move these frames into the new hive. This provides the new colony with a strong foundation of workers, brood, and food.
- Step 4: Introduce a new queen to the split or allow the bees to raise their own queen from the brood. If you choose the latter, the colony will raise a queen from a young larva, a process that takes about two weeks.
Splitting hives not only helps manage population growth but also acts as a form of swarm control. The original colony believes it has swarmed and will refocus on rebuilding, while the new hive will start to grow and establish itself as a separate colony.
2. Raising Queens
Raising your own queens is an exciting next step once you’ve gained experience with basic beekeeping. By raising queens locally, you can select for specific traits that suit your environment, such as gentleness, disease resistance, or high honey production. This also allows you to have a supply of queens ready for requeening your own hives or selling to other beekeepers.
- Methods of Raising Queens:
- Natural Queen Rearing: One of the simplest methods for raising queens is to let the bees do it themselves. When a colony needs a new queen, such as after a split or a swarm, the bees will naturally raise a new queen from the larvae. This method is easy and reliable, although it doesn’t give you control over the timing or specific traits of the new queen.
- Grafting: Grafting is a more advanced method that involves transferring young larvae (less than 24 hours old) into queen cells by hand. These queen cells are placed into a queenless hive, known as a cell builder, where the bees will raise the larvae into queens. Grafting allows for greater control over which larvae are raised as queens and can produce multiple queens at once.
- Using a Queen Rearing Kit: Commercial queen-rearing kits simplify the process by providing pre-made queen cups and cell bars. These kits are designed to make grafting easier and help ensure that the larvae are successfully raised into queens.
- Introducing Raised Queens: Once raised, the queens can be introduced into new or existing hives. Queens should be introduced carefully using a queen cage to allow the colony time to accept her scent. Once the bees have accepted the new queen, she will be released, and the colony will resume normal activities.
Raising your own queens allows you to strengthen your apiary by selecting for desirable traits, ensuring you have healthy, locally adapted queens for your colonies.
3. Managing Multiple Hives
As your apiary grows, managing multiple hives becomes more complex and requires greater organisation. With several hives, it’s essential to track each colony’s health, productivity, and treatment schedule. The more hives you have, the more time and resources are required for inspections, feeding, and treatments.
- Tips for Managing Multiple Hives:
- Hive Marking: To avoid confusion during inspections, mark each hive with a unique number, colour, or pattern. This makes it easier to distinguish between hives, especially when you’re managing a larger number of colonies.
- Record Keeping: Good record-keeping is essential for managing multiple hives. Maintain a log for each hive, noting key information such as queen status, brood patterns, honey production, and any treatments or interventions you’ve carried out. This will help you track the health and progress of each colony, identify patterns, and quickly respond to issues.
- Time Management: Managing several hives requires more time, so it’s important to schedule your inspections efficiently. Plan regular hive checks to ensure each colony is monitored for pests, disease, and food stores without overwhelming yourself. In busy seasons, such as late spring and early summer, you may need to dedicate more time to your hives to manage swarming, honey production, and colony health.
By expanding your apiary gradually, you’ll have time to adapt to the increased demands of managing multiple colonies. With experience, you’ll be able to efficiently manage more hives, whether for personal satisfaction or as a business venture.
4. Benefits of Expanding Your Apiary
Expanding your apiary offers several benefits beyond just increased honey production. Having multiple hives provides redundancy, meaning that if one colony experiences issues, you have others to support it. For example, if a hive becomes queenless, you can take brood or a queen from another hive to help restore the queenless colony. Additionally, managing several hives gives you a broader perspective on colony behaviour and helps you become more skilled in handling different challenges that may arise.
- Increased Honey Yield: One of the most obvious benefits of expanding your apiary is an increase in honey production. More hives mean more foraging bees, which can result in a larger honey harvest each year. This can be especially beneficial if you’re looking to sell honey or other bee products as part of a small business.
- Diverse Beekeeping Experiences: With multiple hives, you can experiment with advanced techniques such as raising queens, creating nucs (nucleus colonies), and managing splits. These experiences will enhance your beekeeping skills and allow you to gain deeper insights into bee behaviour and hive management.
- Backup Colonies: Having extra colonies acts as a safeguard in case one of your hives fails or suffers from disease, pests, or poor queen performance. With multiple hives, you can quickly take action to resolve problems in one colony by using resources from another.
Expanding your apiary can be a fulfilling and profitable endeavour, allowing you to explore advanced beekeeping techniques while also increasing your production of honey and other bee products.
Expanding your apiary is a natural progression for beekeepers who have mastered the basics and are ready for new challenges. By learning how to split hives, raise queens, and manage multiple colonies effectively, you’ll be able to grow your operation while ensuring that your bees remain healthy and productive. With careful planning and time management, you can expand your apiary for both personal enjoyment and financial gain.
