I still need to come up there and get some honey.
The bees need space for brood and honey. You can split a hive and create another hive with the split. Or you can keep stacking honey supers to prevent them from swarming. All in what your goal is. I'll typically only have 2 deeps and 2 supers. If they need more room I'll take the bottom super and harvest and replace with fresh super depending on the flow. Otherwise it gets to tall.Questions for @Racerx or others familiar with bees, as a potential new beekeeper in the future;
-If you split hives to prevent overcrowding, don’t you eventually run out of time and money because you’re doubling your hives every so often?
-Assuming you keep hive height reasonable adding only a few boxes, are splits typically done once a year? I realize some of this is related to pollen and nectar flows, but in general is this correct?
-If you limit the number of hives you manage, and you don’t spilt, they will swarm, right? Can you just naturally let them leave, and the half left behind will raise a new queen, with all the brood, honey, and comb that’s already there?
-if all we do is split hives and prevent swarms, then genetically won’t the swarm genes start faltering? Maybe silly.
Believe me, there are FARRR worse things in illinois.oh heeeeeeeeeeeell no. what state is that in? I'll make sure I'm out of town fo sho.
Believe me, there are FARRR worse things in illinois.
Generally speaking, the fewer legs, the scarier.You mean, like, one-legged prostitutes?
When they swarm like this the old queen is in the middle of the cluster somewhere. Clip the branch and shake em in a hive and you should have the queen in there. Close the box up and see if the ones out foraging or the ones that didn't make it in the box try to make their way into the new hive. If you see a cluster at the entrance, they smell the queens pheromones and know she's in there and want in.So bees will just live in a different hive if you put them there? I always assumed they were "loyal" for lack of a better term, to their queen (mother) and sisters.