Hive split/increase Service

Many people have empty hives after perhaps some winter losses or, if you are lucky, after the purchase of some new hives. The splitting of one or more of your existing colonies is a good way to reduce the swarm impulse and to increase both your stocks and longer term honey yield. Splitting can be a little nerve-racking and the outcomes can be a little hit and miss depending upon what is found, the weather, how the bees react etc. We have a few service options for you:

We can

• Inspect and record findings for each hive to be split
• Perform the split to allow for a high likelihood (but not guaranteed) queen cell production in the queenless hive. We cannot guarantee this part of the process nor the successful mating of the newly hatched queen

Similar to above but we graft two sets of six larvae into the hives. One will have the queen in and these grafted cells will probably be removed by the bees. The queenless hive should accept some or all of the cells to make a new queen once they realise they are queenless.

A visit will be required 1-2 days afterwards to check on the grafting success and repeat the process if required. 

This is the most likely process to succeed. A mated queen will be brought along and some brood and food (but not your established Queen) will be transferred to a different hive. The new Queen will be introduced. The queen will be fertilised so she should start producing baby bees within a few days.

This offer is subject to a few basic conditions such as time of year and condition of your donor colony and host hive. This puts the risk onto us in that, if the process doesn't work, we will come back and repeat it for up to another two occasions. This gives you a MUCH higher chance for success but we will not be able to guarantee successful increase from a diseased or low-quality colony. This will be declared at our first visit where necessary.