 Hi, welcome to the Lotech Institute's informal video number two about splitting a hive So I've got one hive with a queen and one hive with queen cells in the backyard And basically my goal for the day is making them into five different hives each With its own colony or this potential colony of bees So I'm smoking them to keep them calm and Suppressed the smell of the alarm pheromone and also people say they eat a whole bunch of honey, so they can't sting you Anyway, so I'm taking the top board off and the top box And these are called deeps these boxes because they're so deep It's full of honey and so I'm gonna take a couple of frames of honey and put them into these smaller Hives called nukes on the side, and I'm gonna give each nuke You can see one here, and there's two more on the ground behind me out of frame. I'm gonna give each one of these frames Sorry, I'm gonna give each one of these nukes two different frames of honey so that the nascent Colonies in there are gonna have plenty to eat I'm gonna jump ahead here once I get this See if it takes some of the bees with it and and This nuke has a small entrance and it's a small hive It only takes five frames whereas each of these big hives right now have 20 frames That's okay because they're gonna be getting a new queen and they're gonna need to build up So now I'm taking out the frame of honey I'm gonna pop that right in there, and I'll do the same thing for the two nukes that are behind me out of frame So each one has two frames of honey Then once this top box is mostly empty I take it off and put it on the lid that I've set over here on the hive stand Now you can see that cluster of bees in the middle of the box. They're actually protecting all the brood They're keeping it warm And so what I want to do is go in here and pull out the frames of brood because they've made queen cells See that there's a little bit of a mark. I'm pointing out. That's a queen cell. That's gonna become a queen bee In another two weeks. Basically when this hive was made queen-less they made one of the Worker bees into a queen bee by feeding her royal jelly. Really, there's no difference between a queen bee and a regular bee Except for how they're raised. It's just that they're getting Extra-royal jelly and here I'm pinching off a small Queen cell because I only want the biggest best-looking queen cells in each nukes I don't want any wimpy small queens So I put that in there and that's got the queen cell and a whole bunch of brood on it Basically bees that are gonna hatch in the next 21 days. I'm going to take out this frame which has brood on it I'm gonna perform a little surgery. I'm gonna cut out a two inch by two inch piece of the comb Because the next frame I pull out after this and here I go I'm gonna shake all the bees off here so that I can do the surgery We're not big fans of that, but it's a good way to get the comb clear Anyway, the next frame I pull out is gonna have four queen cells on it And if I were to put that into a nuke, I might get a swarm where one of the queen flies away with half of the hive And so I just want to leave one or two queen cells so that the first queen emerges Goes and kills the other queen and then becomes the single queen in the hive So as you can see when I pull this one out, there's four queen cells And I'm going to be very careful with a two inch by two inch square around the queen cell I'm not going to touch it at all, but I'm going to get all the queen into the two by two cut that I made in the other frame And here it comes. I'm about to pull it out And this is very delicate work and this is unusual. This isn't like a normal everyday type of beekeeping thing And this is the first time I've ever done this sort of cut out and then reattach it to the hive And this way, I'm going to get three nukes each with queen cells in it rather than only two Which would be only possible if I didn't take them off this frame So there they go. Here are the queen cells there. See? And then I put them gently into this other frame of brood And use the soft wax to mesh it in Gently clean it. It's kind of surgical I used a linoleum knife that I sharpened up really sharp and it cut right through the comb real easy I avoided there's metal bands in the comb to help keep it straight I avoided those and then I put the extra comb that I had cut out of the first one Back where those queen cells had been just to plug up that hole And now each one of these frames is going to go into a different nuke so that each one of the nukes Has queen cells and can very soon raise its own queen And become a happy, fully functioning colony This is one way that you can make more colonies out of a single colony Here with one colony and now by the end of the day I'm going to have five colonies And as long as all the queens hatch I'll be set So now what I need to do is get a little more brood And this double colony here or this double deep hive This one has the queen in it so I'm going to have to pull out some of the honey out of the top And then I'm going to pull the top box right off which is mostly honey Anyway I'm going to pull that off and put it to the side because I want to find more brood Notice the nuke only has three frames at this point I need to put two more frames of brood and because this one has a queen It has a whole bunch more brood but first I have to find the queen And I got really lucky on the first frame this one here that I pulled out I found the queen now I don't find the queen every time I go in the hive It's really as long as I see really young larva I can pretty much assume that the queen is there In this case though I have to find the queen because I'm going to pull her out of this hive And I'm going to put her in the box next to this one So that the now queenless hive has to raise new queens there I'm pointing to the queen and since I found her I'm going to pop her right in this box And now they have a queen and the other box doesn't That's going to force them to raise an emergency queen And in a couple of days I'll go back in and I'll find those big Pendulous pimply looking queen cells I hope In the now queenless hive they're going to raise their own queen And that's a way that I can split and make more hives Basically I'm removing the queen forcing them to make a new queen So here I'm checking the brood and that's going to go into this nuke Eventually I'll have three frames of brood and two frames of honey If I were putting a queen in there I'd put two frames of brood And two frames of honey and one empty But because they don't have a queen they need extra bees So my camera died at this point Basically the rest of what I did was fill up that queenless now queenless nuke Fill up that now queenless hive and added supers on it Because all those field bees aren't going to have anything to do Because they're going to have less and less brood So they might as well put up honey for me while they're raising a queen The rest of the colonies now will be in building mode And they're going to be building up And soon I'm going to put them into their new hives that I'm going to be building soon So stay tuned for a video on that So I started this season with one really full three deep frame Three deep of full of bees And now I have potentially five colonies that have split out of it Because it was so strong Stay tuned for more videos We'll have a couple more informal and formal videos coming up soon And I'll be updating on the blog and the website about how my beekeeping goes throughout the year Thanks for checking out this video Please head to our website, lowtechinstitute.org for more videos and information Thanks for stopping by