So one of the goals this year was to increase the number of hives that we have. We started with two last year and by the time we were through this winter we were down to one. Knowing that we are going to lose some hives over the winter if we start out with more than two hives going into winter we should be able to come out with more than two hives next spring. With that in mind we set out some swarm traps and did some splits of the hive that survived.
Increasing hives using splits and swarm traps takes advantage of what bees do naturally in the spring, they reproduce by swarming. For us starting with walk away splits seemed the easiest and the least likely to add additional work. Raising queens using other methods tends to be a bit more precise about timing and we don't quite have the resources for that yet. We did have an extra deep box, so we took some time to convert that into what people sometimes refer to as a queen castle. Basically we broke the box up into more than one chamber. With the hive body divided in half we took 10 frames from our surviving hive and split that. The goal was to get two new colonies from this hive bringing our total to three hives. It is basically a waiting game after you move the frames away from the mother colony.
We decided to try to split the 10 frames into two 5 frame colonies to increase the odds that we would have a successful split. After 30 days we checked in on the hive and we had one new laying queen and the other side was still queenless. So we added some more eggs and will wait 30 more days to see what happens.
So during this time we also set out two swarm traps at two locations where my family lives. Knowing that there are feral bees in those areas we thought we might be able to catch a swarm or two. The other benefit of this is that you aren't buying the bees. We set the traps out in late April anticipating that we might get lucky and catch a swarm in May. We had tried this last year, but pulled the trap too soon. So this year if we had any activity we would wait until we saw them bringing pollen in to ensure that they were actively raising young bees.
Last year we had activity the first week of June and again this year we had bees checking out one of the swarm traps in early June. When we opened it we could tell that it was likely just scout bees investigating if this would be a good home. When we checked the second trap we didn't find any bees, but a nice European hornets nest and an angry hornet. So we locked up the hornet and waited to see if we had a swarm of bees.
Two weeks later we checked our trap again and sure enough there was a swarm occupying the trap and quite a nice one at that. The queen had already started to lay eggs and the bees were busy building comb, bringing in pollen, and nectar. We transferred them into a new hive body and will wait to move them when we can. We are hoping to set up another bee yard on the property where we caught them, but a few things have to happen prior to that.
So at this point we have added two free colonies using swarm traps and splits. We also bought two additional colonies hoping to grow our number of hives. Currently we have 5 and are hoping that we are able to add two more. Bringing our total for this season to seven hives. If they all look good by the end of the season we will go into winter with all 7.
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