Managing Mid-Summer Splits (133)

Episode 133 – Managing Mid-Summer Splits

Kim Flottum: Jim, have you seen the BIP winter loss survey that just came out? You seen the numbers from there?

Jim Tew: This is from the past winter or the year before? Is that survey out already, Kim? No. In fact, I haven't seen it.

Kim: Okay. I'm going to be honest, I haven't looked hard at the numbers, but I've heard a lot about people disputing the numbers, agreeing with the numbers, saying that it was a good survey, bad survey, whatever. What it comes, what it boils down to is what they're saying is about a 40% loss, winter loss last winter. That's pretty much in line with what they've been saying from this survey, annual survey they take every year, about 40%, 35 to 50, somewhere in there.

Jim: It's unfortunate that we're so resolute about losing approximately half our bees every year. There's no reason to live in the past Kim, but accepting that number, a big deal for me it used to be 5, 10, 12% loss. Routinely 40% now, if it's okay, I guess it's okay, we're all accustomed to it, but that's a high number, Kim.

Kim: It is. Hi, I'm Kim Flottum.

Jim: I'm Jim Tew, and we're coming to you today from Honey Bee Obscura, where I want to chat with Kim to see if I can make late-season divides to set myself up to survive the winter better with more colony numbers.

Introduction: You are listening to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the folks behind Beekeeping Today podcast. Each week on Honey Bee Obscura, hosts Kim Flottum and Jim Tew, explore the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees in today's world. Get ready for an engaging discussion to delight and inform all beekeepers. If you're a longtimer or just starting out, sit back and enjoy the next several minutes as Kim and Jim explore all things honey bees.

Kim: Late season divides. A quick look and that seems to make sense. I want to have extra going into winter, so when I lose that 40% over winter, I end up with what I want to have as opposed to 40% fewer than I want to have. Is there a problem with mid to late-summer splits? Is there a problem with those?

Jim: Everything you're saying is where I was trying to get to. There's no reason to have the listeners know anything but the reality of what you and I do. We're not young people anymore. We don't keep bees the way we used to with the energy and labor commitment. I don't keep as many colonies anywhere from 5 to 10. In the years past, if it justifies my existence I had hundreds.

Kim: Hundreds.

Jim: Not anymore. I had people helping, I had energy and youth. Those 5 to 10 colonies mean the world to me. They are my link to beekeeping in my late-life career here. Kim, I'm trying to get to a point, if I'm going to lose 40%, I've only got five colonies. [laughs] I'm getting really close to not having any colonies, so I'd like to chat with you and with the listeners.

If I go out this late in the season, I've got some really nice tall colonies, heavy honey crops on them. Can I just split them in half, Kim, and reintroduce a new queen or introduce a new queen and then have two smaller colonies from one, both of which have a chance of surviving the winner? I would give them an abundance of honey. I've got some pollen substitute I could put on, but I don't think it's necessary. There's something, why does it taste like I have a nickel in my mouth when I begin to think that I'm going to make these divides in early July? There's something wrong with that. Why doesn't that feel right, Kim?

Kim: I'm going to tell you one thing that I'm thinking of here is that you're talking about putting in a new queen. You're going to call up somebody and have them ship you one, or you're going to go someplace that raises them and they're going to give you one you're going to come home and put it in. How old is that queen? Did she hatch in April or May in California or down in Texas? Did she just come out last week because they're continually raising queens? One thing you got to know, are you getting an old queen? If you are, there's lots of things. Well, you know what to expect with an old queen. She may do well, she may not be accepted, she may not do well, that's a risk with an old queen start. I'm starting there.

Jim: Now, Kim, when you call her an old queen, she's actually a banked queen. That's what you're talking about, right? I'm buying a queen that's been in a queen bank since last, I don't know, last middle of last May. She's been in a cage in a nursery colony. She's been confined. What effects does that have on a queen? That's like a newly made queen who's developing her egg production capability and put her in a cage for 8 to 10 weeks. That may be the kind of queen I'm getting. She may be a banked queen, or the demand for queens may be high enough from some producers that they're still raising queens as fast as they can. I don't know.

Kim: At least be aware that banked queen may not be at the top of the pile in terms of quality. You've got that going against her. I mean, she may be just fine, or she may be brand new from somebody who's just been raising queens since the snow melted and they're still raising queens because they need them for their operation and they're selling the extra ones. Let me ask you this, in your colonies what drone population you got?

Jim: I was expecting that. I can say that I've got a drone population, the drones are common. I would say that my drone population's okay, where are you going? Are you going to tell me to let them raise their own queen?

Kim: That's an option. It's probably not the best option, but it's an option if you let them go ahead and raise their own queen. You're satisfied with the number and the quality of drones that she's going to encounter as she flies out there. Not your drones, but the guy down the road and the folks up the farm lane there. What's the quality and the quantity of their drones considering that this is the middle of Varroa season A, and B, how has their queens been doing since this season? If you're going to let the colonies raise their own queen, you got some issues there too. You got to know that or be aware of the fact that she may not be able to make well, or maybe doing just fine, but it's a guess.

Jim: I got to tell you, Kim, I didn't see that coming, but if it's the 1st of July right now, and these are boomer beehives and my plan, my notion, my idea was to take those beehives and cut them in half so that I've got two respectable beehives that are half size. I'm just going to put a new queen in and pay what, $45, $50 by the time I get her here. Yes, if they just raise their own queen, then by the second, when would it be, Kim? About the second week in August, they would have a new queen. Does that leave her enough time to replace, you see now I'm getting in trouble.

Do I have the right colony configuration of aged bees to go into winter? Will I go into winter with mostly old bees and not enough young bees because the queen only got on the job late in the season? Yes, I was thinking when you said that there's some issues letting them raise their own queen. Basically, you've just given me situations where there are issues. You've not told me anything positive about this idea.

Kim: I haven't because until you know all of the things that can go wrong, it's hard to do what you can do right, but let's take a break here for our sponsor.

Jim: I think we need to.

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Jim: Okay. I'm not sure how we picked back up on this. The whole notion that I was having is there are reasons outside of beekeeping, why my colony numbers are low. I've had some health issues in my family that have made me reprioritize things, and so my bees didn't always get the energy and the labor they should have gotten. I should have been making divides. I know it, I know it, Kim. I should have been making splits and divides 4, 5, 6 weeks ago, but I just couldn't.

Kim: Let me ask you another question real quick here. What's your Varroa population in those colonies? Have you been on top of that?

Jim: No, I've not been on top of that.

Kim: The reason I ask that is because--

Jim: You're just trying to embarrass me now. I know why you asked. [laughter]. You're just trying to embarrass me. Okay, just so the listeners know, yes, I have a red face and I'm holding my head down. I'm going to go kill Varroa this afternoon if I have to use a fly swat to do it. Go ahead, Kim. You were making a point. Get it over with.

Kim: The point is can you say an average mite population in July? If you've got some number of mites, you've also got some amount of viruses floating around there. With that, you've got a queen that you're trying to get mated with drones that are probably not as healthy as they could have been. Thinking midsummer splits, you almost need to go back to mid-spring to start your Varroa control so that when you get to midsummer, your Varroa population and thus your virus population is going to be fairly low so when that queen goes out to mate, what she's running into, if she's running into any drones at all, are drones that are fairly healthy as opposed to maybe none or whatever. That's just one of the issues that goes on. We haven't even talked about what the bees are thinking.

Jim: I don't know what the bees are thinking, but I have an idea what the bees are thinking that I've lost my mind that this is not spring. Hey Kim, I can just have so much sympathy for the bees. They act like that hollow that they're living in, in a rotted tree isn't going to go down in a swarm. Bees need to deal with major setbacks all the time even if I were nowhere on the scene.

Kim: Yes.

Jim: Bad things happen to bees all the time and they're not always only beekeeper caused. The bees need to have some kind of recourse. I think what you're saying, I think where you're going was that the bees are in a different bee psychological place. They're in a finishing mode for the year, not a building-up mode for the year. They're past that phase. Am I thinking what you were saying?

Kim: From an overview of a colony's life cycle or seasonal cycle, however, you want to look at it. Yes, and I like that finishing mode phrase because that's where they're headed. The queen is doing but she's not breaking doors down to get eggs laid. Hopefully, she got mated well whether you brought her in from somebody else or you got her yourself. It's still going to take time. If you make a split and you put a new queen in today, it's going to be three weeks before she starts producing viable workers.

Jim: It'll be closer to four, four and a half weeks.

Kim: Yes. You've got that lag there that you can use to your advantage to treat but there's a lot of ifs here.

Jim: Well, there's one if you haven't mentioned, if I made a split, one half gets the old queen, the other half just gets jerked around. They've got to go into high gear and raise their own queen. That brings about a brood break. What effect does that have on the end-high Varroa population to have a brood break?

Kim: From the hives' perspective, that's a good thing. You just got a brood break. You don't have any place for Varroa to go and their population's going to take a hit because of that. If you then use that break to introduce some additional population reduction techniques, some sort of strip or something, you could get it down even lower so that when your queen starts laying, she'll be producing brood that is maybe Varroa less.

Jim: Yes, Varroa reduced.

Kim: There you go.

Jim: At least Varroa reduced. We're making up new terms right and left. I hope people are taking notes. Is that going to be on the quiz, Kim?

Kim: No.

Jim: By now everybody has a good idea that we don't have a clue what we're talking about. Basically, the question is that I was struggling with since I missed my window this spring and since I just went through the summer solstice and was forcefully reminded that we're on the downhill side of this year right now, what can I still do that would help me salvage parts of this year or do you just say, "Hey, don't make any splits, leave a lot of honey on, keep those bees Varroa reduced and winter them well and make splits next spring and do it right then."

Kim: Yes.

Jim: Yes, I thought you'd say that. I'm liking it more and more too because instead of me having to go out and handle all that honey and those big colonies and they are going to be cranky, Kim. They are not going to be happy to see me, and to make those splits and get that queen in there, either buy one for money or either let them raise their own and may be antsy for weeks on end, did they do it, did they do it? Kim, I could just leave those big fine colonies alone, do the best I can to suppress Varroa, get them wintered well, and then rip into them next spring and be on a better more timely schedule.

Kim: There's another option you got to consider here and as long as we're not talking about money is to buy from another beekeeper an established nuc. Five frames established queen, pretty clean from Varroa. You could take that and they aren't in the midsummer pause, if you will, they're growing.

Jim: You mean buy a nuc right now or buy a nuc next spring.

Kim: Buy a nuc right now, if you want, then build it up. Use some brood from your existing colonies, some bees from your existing colonies. You got an established queen, it's going to cost you more but in the long run, is it going to cost you less because you're not replacing a colony you lost?

Jim: I honestly can't tell you that I'm in any part of beekeeping for any economical reason. Everything I do in beekeeping seems to cost too much. With that as a basic foundation that would work better. What's the difference in buying a nuc now from another beekeeper and me making a nuc from my own colony? I'm still going to have that same seasonal resistance that they're finishing, they're not building.

Kim: A nuc that you get from another beekeeper is still on the upward swing, still in the upward mode. You got a queen. They're trying to build their population. They don't have enough bees to go into winter and colonies tend to, he says carefully, have a goal on how big they want to be going into winter because they've got a minimum population to keep the brood. They're going to warm each other through winter. Let me put it this way, my experience has been that buying a midsummer nuc with an existing established queen works. I haven't done thousands of them. I've done tens of them, but I've done tens of them and they work.

Now here's another thing. The Varroa issue also has to be considered. You have to go back and take a look at that, keeping them under control from now until winter. The problem with bees today is that I think we're still looking at the bees today and looking at them like we did the bees 20 years ago, and they've got too many challenges, new challenges, old challenges, different issues that affect growth rate and all of those things. How can we get rid of old bad habits that were good 20 years ago?

Jim: Why 20 Kim? I would've gone back 40. 20 years ago I was still making changes, accepting Varroa and whatever, but I don't want to reminisce but I got to give you this. The bees that you and I work right now are not the bees that we worked 20 and even 40 years ago. Everybody thinks, our people usually think because we've kept bees a long time that somehow you have this vast knowledge. The rules of the game keep changing Kim.

Kim: Good way to put it.

Jim: The knowledge that I had all those years ago can be basically useless. I've oftentimes enjoyed saying if someone like C. C. Miller suddenly walked in the room, he's a grand old beekeeper, wrote Fifty Years Among the Bees, and was a prominent bee journal subscriber and wrote articles. If he walked into the room, the first thing he'd need is a short course to get caught up on where we are in beekeeping right now. We're dated, you and I both, the whole thing that started this Kim was I am aware that I lose about 40%, 35% to 40% every year.

If I've let my colony numbers dwindle really low because of my age and energy situation, then 40% of a small number, like 5% or 10% leaves me really close to not having any bees at all. I can buy packages, I can recover, but it's just so bitter, isn't it? To suddenly have have no bees at all.

Kim: It is, and I'll do this carefully, but having bees is becoming somewhat like raising chickens for eggs. You have them for a while, they peak out on eggs per day or eggs per week, and once that peak is reached, they begin to decline. You get rid of those chickens and you bring in some new ones. It's almost the same with bees. Bees, they grow, they peak, they make a lot of honey, they begin to decline. You take two steps back and you say, "About half of you aren't going to be here next spring. Why don't I even bother trying to get you through the next spring?'

Jim: [laughs] I don't even like you. [laughs] No, I see where you're going. I see exactly where you're going. Well, when I started this whole discussion with you, I was honestly, listeners, serious about considering taking those nice colonies I got back here and making about double the number of mostly nice colonies. I save labor, I save money, I don't harass the bees. I just have to write off this year that I missed the window last spring and then next year I get the do over but isn't it interesting that with beekeepers there's always next year. The next year is going to always be better. What is it [laughs] about chasing our tail on that?

Kim: Good way to put it. Well, if you decide to make those splits, give me a call. I'll come down and watch.

Jim: Yes, you can make pictures of me killing beehives.

Kim: [laughs] There you go.

Jim: Kim, I just had a great experience. I went to the Will County Beekeepers meeting in Joliet, Illinois. We've got some listeners there. I just want to say hi to all the people that suddenly have faces and said that they would be tuning in when we do this on Thursdays. All the best of those newbie people that I've met there. I had a great time. Thanks for having me visit there.

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Kim: Sounds like a good time.

Jim: Now I'm finished. It was a good time.

Kim: I too. Thank you for your kind words, folks from Joliet. Like I said, Jim, when you decide to make those splits, give me a call. I'll come down and watch.

Jim: Yes, don't hold your breath. I'll pretty much come to my senses.

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[00:22:28] [END OF AUDIO]

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