# Melvin Disselkoen's De-Queening for Honey tactic



## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

I have done this and I may do it again next year. The bees don't get depressed as long as they have a way to make a queen.

I don't think that I got much more honey, but I didn't have to worry too much about swarming. 

For me I pulled my queen and two to three frames of brood on May 15 about two weeks before the flow. I put them in nuc boxes. So the hives starts making a new queen. For 16 days they don't have a queen. Then about 10-14 days to mate and start laying. Then 21 days until workers hatch. This kept my mite problem low.

The issue was that I had to keep all of those nuc's that I didn't really need or combine depending on whether I thought the new queen was better or not. I have not done this for a couple of years, but as I said I may start again next year with at least some of my hives.


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## MikeJ (Jan 1, 2009)

Basically I accidentally did this, this year.
The hive stuffed honey everywhere. I have a deep packed and being capped.
They stuffed it in the first deep too. If I had an extractor I am guessing there would be 80Lbs of honey I could have gotten. We are about to come into the sweet clover, but now I have queens in the hives.

Mike


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

A cut down split is similar in form and function but more specific. You take all the open brood and the queen and most of the honey for the split. You leave the emerging and capped brood and little honey at the old location. This maximized foragers as they return to the old hive, they are emerging constantly and there is no brood to feed.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#cutdown


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## Tara (Jun 17, 2010)

Thanks for the answers so far!

Anyone else do this on a regular basis for honey production?


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## DerTiefster (Oct 27, 2016)

Deliberately re-activating this thread to lure responses. I'm interested in OTS and the IPM aspects, and want to know as did the O.P. here whether pulling the queen into a split really does increase honey production.

Given that the original population of bees is the same in either case (non-split or splitting), any increase in total honey capped may result from a decrease in later bee population due to brood not having been fed. But if the queen right split grows as many new workers as the original hive would have grown (they have the queen and all of the eggs she lays are there, too) then I don't see what makes the foragers pull in more nectar.

But perhaps in the nuc hive, the nurses (smaller in number) nurse the larvae more efficiently, and the nurse bees in the old hive are freed for work as additional foragers.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

The most honey ever produced by one of my hives was after I took a five frame NUC out just before the honey flow. They made a great queen and made a lot of honey at the same time. Not a world record, but they made 11 gallons of honey, which is excellent for this location.

The advantage comes when there is no larva to feed...ALL efforts are spent on a few queen cells and then filling empty cells with honey. I took the NUC frames out a few weeks after I had checkerboarded the second hive body.

It can be complicated if your flow is not reliable. Mine is not, so it's a bit of a guess as to when to do this for perfect timing.

The hive in question is on the far left. The NUC is beside it. I grafted from the queen in the NUC the next year.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Abby warre when starting a hive from a skep at the beginning of the flow was a big proponate of discarding all the brood and doolittle moved all the brood but a half frame but kept all the bees and the queen. 
At least this is what I got from what I read and the doolittle thing is repeated on mels site. I am too new to have tried any of this but I did buy a queen excluder as one of the very few things I have bought so far incase this is the way I decide to try for a split for increase next year if my bees even live that long.
Cheers. I also built a double board incase I try to go that way and put the queen on top and let the bottom make a queen and syphen off bees to the original queenless side untill the summer equinox.

I don't know what I am doing but it is sure fun reading what is possible and so will be fun to see more responces to this thread.
Cheers
gww
Cheers
gww


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It is the timing of the mature bees that turn into the foragers on a flow. If you
miss the timing then no matter how many busy bees you have you'll not get any honey because
the short Spring flow is already over. The trick is how can you manipulate the hive for max honey production?
Only on a side-by-side comparison between the 2 hives can you really tell. I rather have many supporting nuc hives
on a flow for the production hives. More mature bees turning into the foragers is where the honey is at. How to do this you
have to time it out. Mature bees = more foragers! No larvae to feed = more foragers!


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

This has been kicked around many times; always coming back to being able to time it to grab the key flow time with the max number of foragers. Crystal Ball territory! I pull open and capped brood off just before I think swarm prep timing is near. I go early rather than risk losing a swarm and that definitely will reduce honey production to near zero in many places. It can increase potential honey production if timed right but I dont chase that angle.

If you have a long slow honey flow you may not gain much, but if it is short and followed by a long mid summers dearth there is an advantage to limiting prodction of brood that would not mature to foraging stage till the dearth would be on. It seems to me that the weather is getting more unpredictable than it was in the good old days!

If you have only a handful of colonies the method that gww mentions is very workable to control bee populations and placement in the colony.

_ gww>" I also built a double board incase I try to go that way and put the queen on top and let the bottom make a queen and syphen off bees to the original queenless side until the summer equinox."<_

This is the double screened division board (Snelgrove Board) I ran 5 of my colonies this way the past summer and self requeened them all this way plus started 5 new colonies. Honey production averaged 75 lbs a colony which is not bad for here considering colony numbers doubled. No swarms.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

crofter said:


> _ gww>" I also built a double board incase I try to go that way and put the queen on top and let the bottom make a queen and syphen off bees to the original queenless side until the summer equinox."<_
> 
> This is the double screened division board (Snelgrove Board) I ran 5 of my colonies this way the past summer and self requeened them all this way plus started 5 new colonies. Honey production averaged 75 lbs a colony which is not bad for here considering colony numbers doubled. No swarms.


This year I used this MD tactic on about 30% of my hives and using the double screened division board and the result was very positive. It was the year that my hives produced more honey on average. To add to the fact that the year has gone bad or even very badly to a large majority of Portuguese beekeepers.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> This year I used this MD tactic on about 30% of my hives and using the double screened division board and the result was very positive. It was the year that my hives produced more honey on average. To add to the fact that the year has gone bad or even very badly to a large majority of Portuguese beekeepers.


Eduardo, do you pull the division board out after the swarm time has passed? I have not notched the combs to locate where queen cells will be located as I have been satisfied with enough cells the bees chose, but the cell notching and division board could be combined.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Frank this had depended on the strength of the colony placed over the division board with the queen mother.

In most cases I took the board even during the swarming period. The reason was to potentiate as much as possible the colony with the queen mother, whenever they were sufficiently strong.
These colonies were passed to a hive two to three weeks later, still during the swarming season, and taken to other apiaries with higher altitude to develop and take advantage of the later nectar flows of these areas. The daughter colony stayed on site with the queen cells or the new queen.

In the weaker colonys above the divider board I let them stay until September, to benefit as much as possible from the heat coming from the colony under the divider board, and so they grew until I retired them at the end of the summer. I also noticed that some of these colonys made the supersedure. The double screened division board was an equipment that greatly improved my handling. It is my intention to move from the 100 that I currently have for the 200-250.


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## spencer (Dec 7, 2004)

This would be a great way to sell the over wintered queen in a nuc and also get a fresh new queen every year.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

To not take the thread entirely away from the original poster, Tara, I have not made the production hives queenless so cannot comment about them becoming listless or depressed.

What Eduardo is doing to produce the split, if I understand correctly, does make the production part of the hive queenless and he does not feel it hurts production. I leave the queen in the bottom and let the upper new colony produce the new queen. I will have to try it the other way. There are lots of instructions on the web on both methods.

Some people feel that notching the cells saves the bees some time tearing down the old cell walls, so the small larvae gets uninterrupted feeding as a queen from the earliest age. I cant complain about the quality of queens produced by the bees under the circumstances but then I do not try to see how long a queen will lay. My thought; less chance of an untimely demise of older queens.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

crofter said:


> What Eduardo is doing to produce the split, if I understand correctly, does make the production part of the hive queenless and he does not feel it hurts production.


Yes exactly.
My accounting is: from one colony I made two. With the timely displacement for apiaries with later flows of the colony with the mother queen this colony produced. The daughter colony, as the bees were breeding the new queen, they filled the nest with honey and one to two medium supers (25-30 Kg was a very good production this year in my country). I also noticed that the bees did not totally block the nest with nectar as if they anticipated that the future queen would need some space to start laying. 

When for some reason some of these divided colonies was orphaned, I just took out the division board with no fights. And I did swarm prevention.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Crofter
I had read that the reason to put the queen on the small top portion of the divider board was because the original hive on bottom had more resources (bees) to rear a better queen. My only real concern in trying this is how to handle adding space for honey storage and judging what needs what. I really like mels site and proceedure but unlike Eduaro, I don't want to move my splits 3 miles away. I had a bad experiance moving new comb in a hive due to being foundationless. The comb ended up on the bottom.

I am so new.
gww


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

gww said:


> I had read that the reason to put the queen on the small top portion of the divider board was because the original hive on bottom had more resources (bees) to rear a better queen.


Yes gww this was my idea. I have read somewhere (Randy Oliver?) that old bees have a certain plasticity and can produce royal jelly again if circumstances dictate or require them.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Tara I have done this several seasons but as was previously stated, timing is essential if one is to get the full benefit in honey production. I found timing to be a moving target that I mostly failed to hit the sweet spot. I still do it with some of my best colonies to collect multiple beautiful emergency cells for splits and I let the old queen rebuild a new colony. She is most often superceded and I save her genetics and get another young queen. The percentage of my hives that seem to be mediocre, are used to provide the brood and bees for my splits with the better queens genetics.


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## BigBlackBirds (Aug 26, 2011)

IMO, this isnt a bad method for producing comb honey at least in manageable quantities. Other than that, its alot of work on top of the timing part just to make a crop of honey. Guess I can see it as a viable option for someone like Mel with only a handful few colonies that need to be maximized. Myself, I'd rather just run a few more colonies and get the same end result production wise.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

I was looking at these options cause I only have one hive that could be considered a production size hive and only three hives all together. I was hopeing to end up with maby another hive or two but still get a little honey in my second year and also to do it at my house and not have to move hives. I also am looking for something that I can understand and repeat with out thinking real hard. If I had enough hives that I wasn't afraid of losing them all, I would have a few prodution hives and just do walk away splits with the others to keep up with dead outs that might occur. I will be glad when I know what to do and not like now of not knowing the cause and effect of things.
It would be nice to taste some of my own honey this year.
Cheers
gww


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## thesecurityeagle (Jun 21, 2016)

Im following the comb honey thread on here and reading the reference text, A year in the out apiary. Im hoping to do ross rounds this spring and then pulling out a split, maybe two if I am lucky.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

thesecu........
I have tried to memorize that book but find doolittles comunication style is sometimes hard for me to put together exactly what he means. He also takes for granted that his readers are smart enough to know what he means when he says things like shake the bees and such.

mel mentions doolittles tactics and puts his twist on it also. 
Cheers
gww


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## DerTiefster (Oct 27, 2016)

I resurrected this thread from 2010, and I've appreciated the input others have made. The O.P. (Tara) has a profile which indicates no activity since 2011, and so may not be benefiting from these answers. But I am.

My understanding of Disselkoen's pattern of operation is that he targets raising bees rather than honey. Splitting off the queen is part of his brood break for the main colony, aiding in varroa control. Instead of doing a many-way split of the main colony using multiple induced queen cells as he favors, he mentions the option foreign to his operation of increasing honey production by keeping it intact and broodless. I find this interesting.

In my small hobby operation, I'd like to drive a half-dozen to a dozen colonies to produce significant amounts of honey as well as multiple splits. Keeping varroa at bay with (mostly) IPM techniques would be of great benefit. It seems that this is one of Disselkoen's successes.


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

2016 saw me go into and come out of the winter with one strong colony, 2 deeps and a medium packed full of honey and bees. Added another medium or 2 early April. April 12th I found a load of swarm cells all over the hive. Made (2) 4 frame splits, one with the old queen, one with swarm cells, and left swarm cells in the parent hive (3 way split?) Each split had 2 frames brood and 2 frames stores, with tons of capped brood left in the parent hive. Splits went into a Palmer style double nuc. Flow was under way and went strong into June. Parent hive proceeded to build out the 8 removed frames and packed 2 mediums full of honey, plus some extra throughout the deeps. 75lbs easy. Parent hive swarm cells hatched OK, but something went wrong and they did not end up with a Queen. I re-introduced the old queen in a push- in cage and she was accepted fine and went right to work in her old haunts. The split that had had the old queen went on to build another and ended up with a good queen. The other split raised a great queen as well. 
Summary: Pulling the queen resulted in no apparent loss in production and provided me with 2 new hives that built well through this season, and will hopefully be ready to rock and roll come spring. I will do this method again. Buying queens would probably have been faster and more productive still, but I prefer letting them raise their own for now. Just what works for me.


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

Might also add to the point about timing the flow: If you know your primary flow plants, take a look at Growing Degree Days. This is a phenological tracking system that is very accurate for tracking bloom times. 

https://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/gdd/

This is a link to one for Ohio. You can track what is in bloom and what will soon bloom starting the first of the year. (Ok, starting in early march, more like.) To use it type in your Zip Code, and then click on view full calendar. Currently, the 2016 one is finished and they haven't started the 2017 one yet, but come about mid february we begin to accumulate GDD and the calendar will show where we are and what is coming into bloom soon. If you are out of state and just want to peruse it, use 45229, that's a Cincinnati Zip.

No crystal ball, but combine it with weather forecasts, and it ain't too shabby.


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## jvalentour (Sep 4, 2014)

Thanks BeeBeard, bookmarked that one.
Don't the oldtimers say watch for the dandelion bloom or something like that when the flow is on?


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

Dandelions are among the first forage plants available to the bees around here. Dayton isn't far from me. I'm in suburbia with lots of lawn space and woodline scrub trees and weeds. I see good buildup through 450 GDD which covers most apple and crabapple bloom. This is spring buildup time where the hives should be getting beefed up for the main flow. In our area, Black Locust first bloom at 467 GDD usually signals the start of the main flow and you had better be ready. It will continue, switching into white clover (575 GDD approx.) as the black locust fades. When the clover starts to fade, that is usually the end of the main flow. The beauty of the GDD system is it is accurate whether it is a warm early spring, cold late one, or whatever. The physiology of the plants' growth doesn't change, they have specific needs for accumulation of growing time and will bloom when they hit that, regardless of the calendar. The only thing that can throw a wrench in it would be exceptionally dry or really extended hot weather, which will shorten bloom time no matter where you are.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

beebeard
Your growing zones seem simular to mine and so when you are putting numbers like 450 GDD, I am assuming this is a date on a calender. My peach pear plum probly bloom from the end of march to the beginning of april. Just as a general referance to your post. Is the time from 450 GDD to 467 GDD about 17 days? I am new and just trying to get a general Ideal of things. I will probly try your link come spring even though I am in MO.
Cheers
gww


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

A little different than calendar dates. Growing Degree Days (GDD) is a calculated measurement of accumulated growing temperature and is useful for measuring plant development. The calculation of it is a bit complicated and I'm a little fuzzy on the math but the basics are: Most plants (woody plants in particular like trees and shrubs) do little development below a certain average temperature. This is usually around 50-55 F. Growing Degrees are measured when the mercury gets above this threshold for an hour or more. So say you have a spring day that starts in the 40s, makes it up to 55 for 2 hrs in the afternoon, then drops back down in the evening. If the baseline for the calculator is 55f, you have achieved 2 Growing Degrees that day. If the weather is the same the next day, you add 2 more and now you are at 4 Growing Degrees. The plants have been able to increase maturity during those 4 hrs only. A week of cold follows and you get no more GDD. A week of warm follows and you have days in the 60s or even 70s, you still just count the hours the temps are above the threshold because it is the TIME the plants need, not the temperature.

All this is a bit overly complicated for me, which is why I cheat and use the online calculator. For those in other states, I'm afraid I don't have a link for you. I do know that some home weather stations do have the capability to track the GDD for you. A friend of mine has one and I'll try to get the model. If you have one of those, you can use the list on the link I posted previously and check it manually that way.

The GDD system is way more accurate than looking at the calendar. Mother nature doesn't read the calendar. My son's birthday is in mid march and in his 7 short years we have seen his birthday have everything from pear trees in full bloom to ice still on the lakes. Each year, the GDD calculator has been spot on for what is coming into bloom and when. We are the ones who call it "early" or "late", but the trees do their thing in their own time. The EASIEST way to use all this is memorize a few of your key indicator species and watch them in the spring. When the redbuds bloom, you know the apples are close. Next come the hawthorns and viburnums. Then you know the black locusts are getting close and you need to get ready. Knowing your prime forage plants, using the power of observation, and planning ahead for their bloom is key to catching the prime flow with the best hive situation.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

beebeard
I think I have a general ideal of what is going on due to your excellent explination. That was a lot of typing and I thank you for it. I have the basis I need to take it further now.
Thanks
gww


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

And knowing your blooming plants for nectar and pollen is just half the battle.
Prepping up your bees is the other half!


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## Beebeard (Apr 27, 2016)

Don't mind sharing useful tips, that's kind of why we are all here. Typing it out helps me get a better bead on it too. And thanks beepro for bringing it on back around to the topic at hand. If the management plan calls for pulling the queen to manipulate the honey production, timing this action with the flow is a key step.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

There is more than one way to do this without pulling the old queen out unless you like to
have some cap QCs as well. Confined the queen on the lower box with 3 frames of new comb for her to lay inside a big
queen cage with excluder mesh on one side. Put a QE on top to hold her in just in case. Then collect away!


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

spencer said:


> This would be a great way to sell the over wintered queen in a nuc and also get a fresh new queen every year.


That is kind of what I do, but once I remove the overwintered queen and frames, I immediately give the remaining hive a ripe queen cell.

In theory the remaining hive should pack in the honey if timing is right by just removing the established queen, but in reality I find removing the queen demoralizes the colony and their drive diminishes too much for optimal nectar collection without a new queen to (Mentally) stabilize the colony and give it direction. 

Now because that new queen is a_ virgin _ you have about 12-14 days or so before she'll be laying and eggs start hatching. That is when those hives get back filled so badly, I have to make sure the new queen has a place to lay, especially if it is in just a single deep.

I've never done it specifically for honey production, but I keep that in the back of my mind as I basically do that pretty regularly with my queen rearing management.

































These are in single deeps used for a first round of queens. (Left a little too long due to a family issue that took me away for a bit. Mother fell and broke her hip) But Imagine if they were in triples with a large population of foragers. I think your results, once you got the hang of perfect timing, might be impressive.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Good, back filled with honey so I can extract them all. New extractor is waiting.
Of course, running such a strong hive will require a mated queen to
keep them calmer. Should the virgin is MIA or rejected by the strong
colony then it will be a choir to put things back before. In this case a
mated queen will do. With a laying queen confined to the bottom hive with not
much broods you don't have this issue to worry about. If they want to raise the QCs in the top brood nest they are welcome to. You can always released the old queen to restore things again should the virgin cannot make it. A triple deep, double
queens set up is what I like to try this honey flow season.


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