How to multiply bee colonies in WindowBee® hives

Introduction

Most bee breeders start with having one beehive. They just wants to try his hand and find out if they can handle it and whether it will be interesting. However, after a short time it usually turns out that it is much easier to run beekeeping and all kinds of work, obtain larger honey collections by running two or more bee colonies at the same time. It does not increase labor consumption and makes work much easier. Sometimes a family does not do well for different reasons, having two or more can be easily helped by adding a frame with pupae, bees or food from the other hive.

In addition to these facilitations, it’s a lot of fun to grow the swarms on their own or to combine them before the expected benefit, so that the newly created strong family will bring a lot of nectar. Manipulations of corps between individual colonies make this hobby more attractive and at the same time make us independent of traditional beekeepers, who are not at certain times of the year inclined to provide us with bees that we need for our colony to survive. It is a known fact that about 20% of bee families do not survive winter. With two or more colonies, we can rebuild our WindowBee® mini apiary on our own. The methods of reproduction that we must use depend on the time when we plan it. Different dynamics of family development prevails in particular periods of the year, which is why various processes should be initiated.

Reproduction in the second half of May and June

To get a new colony, you need to meet a few conditions. If we do not keep it, the whole process may fail. Bee families during this period are usually at the peak of development and benefit from a rich melliferous plant. Families should be developed so that queen mothers can lay eggs on as large a surface as possible. However, stocks should be located on the top one, max. two frames. The whole family should fit in at least 5 – 6 frames. We must be vigilant and choose the right moment. Bees in this period are very prone to swarming and if we miss the right time of division, they may leave the beehive by issuing a spawning swarm, which will run away with some of the collected honey. In order to make the division of the hive, we must first obtain a new bottom with a roof and a connecting pipe, and we should choose the location of the new hive and prepare everything with the connection by connecting the bottom to the pipe and outside world.

When we observe, favorable weather conditions, a decrease in the movement of bee foragers in the family and the construction of queen cells and the development of larvae in them, this is the most appropriate time to divide. The bee family during this period has been arming forces, queen mother usually limited the laying of eggs, this moment should be used to create a new well-developing family. We choose 2 frames / corps with close-brood without queen cells and with as many workers as possible. We separate them from the remaining patches with separators, considering the queen cells and the queen mother. We download them and install them to a new place on the previously installed bottom. Well, if we can take the mother bee to a new place because it must be there. At the top of the newly created beehive, we put a bottle feeder. If the colony probably do not have food, we need to feed the bees with the sugar solution as long new foragers will appear.

This way we have two hives: -Old hive without a mother but with her daughters in the form of new queen cells. In a few days, mother or mothers will bite out of them and fly for a mating flight, which is an extremely interesting phenomenon, mothers will also sing informing themselves that they are in a beehive. The workers will return to the location what they do remember.

 

Reproduction at other periods of the year.

In early spring and after June or early July, dividing colonies in WindowBee® is very risky. Let be experienced beekeepers or others who have access to Hoffmanian frames with covered brood from classic hives and bee mothers (these people no longer require instructions). Such attempts may also be undertaken by people having several hives WindowBee® receiving frames for creating new families in small numbers but with a large number of hives (it is also worth purchasing a breeding queen mother). Spring reproduction is risky due to cold weather and the need to rebuild the family after wintering in the mother beehives. However, after June it’s risky because bee colonies should start to preparing them selfs for the winter. They should start to doing this in the second half of July.