Layens Beehive Splits 2023 - Searching for Queen Cells

1 week after splitting my honeybee colonies, I search the queenless side of the splits for queen cells. In this video I give a basic overview of the split process and how the hives make queens, and then take you along as I check on the splits.
#beekeeping #horizontalhive #honeybees #beehive #beekeeping101 #beekeeper
I apologize for the audio quality and focus issues. I'm still learning some of the technical skills.
I grew up on a farm on the edge of the Nebraska sandhills. A cattle ranch that bears our family name, founded in the late 1800s by my ancestors, is still owned and worked by my cousin. Life events have put me in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area in middle America, where my wife and I have raised our two kids. It's in this environment that I work to make as sustainable a life as I can, converting much of our backyard to grow food, including a garden, fruit trees and bee hives.
I attempt to use natural methods, as much as is possible, in my gardening and beekeeping. I garden organically and continue to learn to work with the soil and the plants, without the use of chemical supplements, herbicides or pesticides, to improve our harvest. Our honey bees are sourced from local colonies through swarms, trap-outs and cut-outs, and are kept, using treatment-free, natural methods, in Layens horizontal hives.
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00:00 Introduction and Overview of Beehive Splits
02:54 Cosmic Hive
09:43 Under the Sea Hive
13:34 Green Hive
18:29 Taj Mahive
19:51 Conclusion

[@thehiveandthehoneybee9547]

still waitin for that bucket of chick i ordered!!!! thanks do you delifer????

[@eliinthewolverinestate6729]

I hope my bees are doing good. Still got a month before I get up north to check my bees. It's still snowing up north. I got to build another hive assuming swarm trap did it's job. I enjoyed the video.

[@SuburbanSodbuster]

We were blessed with an early spring this year and I tried to make the most of it without getting too far ahead of the season. I hope your bees are doing well, once you can get to them. Thanks for the comment.

[@jomiller4397]

Lots of great ideas here. Thank you for sharing

[@mellarius188]

What a great start to the beekeeping season!

[@beebob1279]

Excellent. I've seen a few of your videos and have commented. Keep them coming. I see great potential for queen rearing with this hive.

[@SuburbanSodbuster]

Thank you! I appreciate your comments.

[@longarmsupplies]

A little advice if you're willing. I'm way up in Alberta. We are having a weird spring. It kept snowing, then warming then cold then warm, on and on. Today is hot and dry. We had a long dry fall last year. I lost one hive to starvation so I dug into the others. NOT A DROP of resources left! But oh my, I've never had this many bees overwinter. I purchased from a new local supplier last year and his bees are amazing! I popped honey that I hadn't extracted last year into the hives. One partial frame for the layens hive(I'm so excited to be switching over to layens).. Lost one of the three langstroth, as I stated. The other two got several frames of honey. I'm feeding pollen patties and sugar water and dry pollen and ground up wheat germ(which I must say I'm shocked at but they love it and prefer it better than the dry pollen sub). What signs should I wait to see before I do splits this year? I'm not touching them until I see abundant pollen coming in but other than that? I don't want to stress them too bad since we are moving from this farm back to our original spot this year(giving the big farmhouse to the kids) and they will all be moved.

[@SuburbanSodbuster]

Local bees can make a huge difference in the bees' health and survivability. I'm glad they're working for you and it's a great idea to propagate those genetics. In planning for splits I'd watch for the bees to start producing drones. Besides the necessity for mating, that's also an early sign of possible swarm preparations, so an indication that colonies are priming to divide. Besides that you should check the long-term forecast 2-4 weeks out (uncertain as that might be). As I mention in the video queens typically don't take mating flights until the temps are about 70F (21C) so you want temps in that range. Don't get hung up on exact numbers, though.
Finally, if you find queen cells in a queenright hive then swarming is imminent and you should split right away - moving the existing queen and frames of resources with bees to another location.

[@iowalayensbeekeeping]

Thanks for sharing your Layens experience. We ard slowly getting more exposure to the masses.

[@SuburbanSodbuster]

Well, y'know, we "Layens cultists" have to stick together! 😄

[@tommychew6544]

Thanks for the video, I live over in SW Missouri and should have listened to what I was hearing about early swarms and missed the window to catch the bigger first wave. Still hoping to catch a later one though, might just depend on cavity size for the feral hives I'm shooting for.

[@SuburbanSodbuster]

Don't be discouraged! There's still a lot of swarm season ahead of us.

[@tommychew6544]

@@SuburbanSodbuster I hope so, in a way I would rather start off small, and only have about 3/4 of an acre in a small town. I don't want too many hives, a splash pad is about to be opened about a block from my house. I don't want to be getting blamed for bee stings if the bees go to the water. I have a creek between myself and it.

[@curly-hairedcountrygal1275]

Monty! How do you come up with these split ideas?! lol Did you get the idea of doing the different walk away splits from Dr. Leo or another beekeeper or did you make it up?!
I was trying to follow your videos from last year to a "T" and now you did something different! I feel so betrayed 😭😂
I'm really hesitant to try THREE in one hive because I'd be concerned about fighting? Or the proximity being too close and the bees drifting back and forth and pheromones being mixed or something?
And I thought that if you moved a frame with brood, you needed to brush/smoke all the bees off (like in Layens 2-3 split) because I assumed the bees in the other colony wouldn't accept the nurse bees with the brood/queen cells... no?
But the thing that DID make a lot of sense is a walk away split by just moving the queen to the opposite side. I have a hive in mind that I'd like to do this with.
I also appreciated the instruction on the types of queen cells- I didn't know there was such a thing as practice queen cells.

[@SuburbanSodbuster]

The truth is that once you have a good feel for what's needed to start a new colony, the method of splitting is just a matter of what's practical for a given case. I believe it is Barnyard Bees that has some videos about 2-frame splits, showing just how little is really needed. As long as a new colony has brood (including eggs/new larvae), resources, and enough bees to maintain them, it's amazing what they can do - and if they have the queen then new brood isn't critical. I'm not good at memorizing and following steps; it's better for me to just have an understanding of the reasons for why things are done and then find the appropriate path for the situation. The in-hive split that I demonstrated last year is useful for balancing the foragers, but I believe that when Dr. Leo demonstrated the concept to the seminar I attended it was in the context of being just one possibility.
As I mentioned in the video, I did have some robbing in this case (1-3 split). That is a distinct possibility with the colonies so close, but I probably should have taken care to balance the populations better. Splitting during a strong nectar flow would mitigate that, too. If they have plenty of forage they generally don't need to rob.
When I move a frame with brood I typically will take the bees that are on it. Nurse bees are less defensive and are usually accepted into a new hive. But if I move a honey frame I try to do it without bees. That's not just because of a greater likelihood of fighting, but there's also a possibility that any forager bees on the frame would return back to their home hive and report of the source of honey/nectar that they "found" - resulting in robbing of the hive I was trying to help.
As for the types of queen cells, I've been finding a lot of "practice" or "play" cups lately. Although they often catch the eye like a queen cell, they're typically rounded like a ball, usually uncapped and empty. If they contain a larvae then the bees may extend it out to make a full cell. I've seen a few that were completely enclosed and that was weird because they were obviously too small to contain any sort of brood (on the edge of the comb I could see the entire marble-shaped cell). I should have done a better job of getting video of each of these as I was talking about them.

[@user-lf2ey4qt4q]

Greetings from Ukraine, please tell us behind the hive of Dadan Blat, it will be interesting.