Re: HOWTO: Split Hive (Without Re-queening)

>Hello Jorn.  Your way of raising queens is a little different than anything
> I've heard before.

In my first dayes of beekeeping I wanted to try to raise a queen. I got the
Idea to the bowcut from what at that tie was a nordic beekeeping bible (Rolf
Lunder : Handbook in Beekeeping).It is in Norwegian language. A lot of new
queenbreeding/Beekeeping literature is written since then, but basic
beekeeping knowledge is covered very well.

Nowadays I still use the Bowcut method if I am short of spare queens that I
always try to have at hand if I need one. (Queenless hive, Aggressive bees,
replacement queen and so on) My Spare queens is raised in modern way and
wintered on top of strong hives. I have a super divided into three chambers
so that it give space for three spare queens. Normally I get enough queen on
hand in spring, but sometimes this fails so what to do then if a queen is
needed? The bowcut method might be the solution then and provide a quick and
dirty way to get a new queen into a queenless hive that have not turned a
laying worker into play. It does not demand a lot of queenbreeding
equipments and tools, just a sharp knife and a brood frame from one of your
best famililies.

1. make a strong nuc to recive the finished brood frame.
2. take a brrod frame with new egs from your best strong hive.
3. Make a dropping Bowcut though the area with new  no more than 1 day old
eggs.
4. remove the foundation below the bowcut.
5. thin one side into the wall of foundation of the bowcut in an belt of 1
cm along the edge of the bowcut, this to prevent quuencups build together.
6. place the prepared bowcut broodframe in the nuc.
7. wait nine days then remove the surplus capped queen cups, and destroy the
uncapped queencups. Let one capped queen cup remain in nuc.

this method can give you from 4 to 7 new queen cells (dependent on the
strength of the nuc) to transfer to hives needing a replacement or to place
in mating nucs, and the best of it does not demand queenbreeding experience
and special queenbreeding tools.


--
Best regards
Jorn Johanesson

Only Multilingual software for beekeeping on the net

hive note- queen breeding and handheld computer beekeeping software since
1997

home page = HTTP://apimo.dk