# What is the best way to increase hives?



## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Do a search on "splits" and you'll get a ton of info. Michael Bush's website http://bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm is easy to recommend as a place to start. Basically if you time it right, splitting can be a useful tool for swarm control and for making increases. Spring splits are fun!


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## magnet-man (Jul 10, 2004)

Start feeding pollen patties now so you can get good strong splits.


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## BGhoney (Sep 26, 2007)

Get your name on some swarm lists, I always get 8-15 swarms a year, often add them to a good hive to make it a great hive before the honey flow. Those are free.


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

WAB said:


> What is the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to increase your hives?



The fastest, cheapest and easiest way would be to steal someone else's hives under the cover of nightfall. No, I take that back...I've moved hives and it's not that easy. 

Now, now, relax. I'm not serious. That was a poor attempt at humor. And losing your public standing as a fine, upstanding citizen is not cheap.

I don't think there is a fast, cheap and easy way. All the methods take preparation, planning, diligence and hard work. In my mind, the best way is to pay attention to details and build up strong hives in the spring, prevent swarming (not easy), buy some queens (not cheap) and make your "splits" (pulling selected frames into new box and introducing a new queen). That seems to be the conventional way. In the spring, you'll get one, maybe two additional hives in addition to your original hives.

Alternatively, buying nucs from another supplier would be fast and easy, but not cheap.

Grant
Jackson, MO


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## WAB (Jun 11, 2008)

I have 5 double box hives. I thought about splitting them but then I would not be able to harvest some honey from them, right? I understand that this would probably be the cheapest way. I was wanting to have my cake and eat it too!! Or honey as the case may be!! LOL!! I'll probably end up buying some packages.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

wab writes:
I have 5 double box hives.

tecumseh:
I would agree with grant that the question represnts a lot of trade off with the net of the + and - summing up to about zero.

with five hive you don't really need to buy packages. although the fact that you have existing hives, drawn comb and brood... these things would make package installation easier.

if you do splits with either purchased queen cell (or some you raised yourself... although it don't sound to me like you are quite there yet???) or purchased queens should allow you to make increase and have a bit of a honey crop also. walk away split will not likely allow this due to the time the brood cycle is broken.

the first thing I would recommend you do is to look real hard (over the next couple of months) at the 5 hives you have and determine the poor doers, the better performer and the best. the poor doers will never produce much of anything but these are great sources of stuff for splits. along this same line of thinking I do a bit of mite testing myself and those hives that run the largest number get treated (to knock down mite numbers) and then split. the good and the best and thereby held in reserve to produce something of a honey crop and genetic material for the next generation. these higher performers can also be tapped for brood or stores to bring along the new splits (which if you do at the proper time really will not much effect the existing season honey crop).


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## sylus p (Mar 16, 2008)

Langstroth said, 

"With ten strong stocks of bees, in moveable comb hives, in one propitious season, I could so increase them, in a favorable location, as to have, on the approach of winter, one hundred good colonies; _but I should expect to purchase hundreds of pounds of honey, devoting nearly all of my time to their management, and bringing to the work the experience of many years, and judgement acquired by numerous lamantable failures_. A certain rather than a rapid multiplication of stocks, is most needed. A single colony, doubling every year, would in ten years increase to 1,024 stocks, and in twenty years to over a million!

and

"The time, care, skill, and food required in our uncertain climate for the rapid increase of colonies, are so great, that not one beekeeper in a hundred (his footnote: Many a person who reads this will probably imagine that he is the one in a hundred) can make it profitable; while most who attempt it, will be almost sure, at the close of the season, to find themselves in possession of stocks which have been managed to death."


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

The swarm catch is probably the closest to "easy and cheap" as BG says; they are both and also tend to draw out comb well and quickly.


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## jesuslives31548 (May 10, 2008)

After the honey flow is over I remove a super, make sure it has good brood, food and pollen. Shake a few extra bees in the box and move it to another yard. Most of the time I will purchase a queen, but have had sucess in the bees making there own. Make sure you have eggs that are really young. I started out with 2 hives and have done this method up to my current count of 50. I do have a few from swarms.


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## Mathispollenators (Jun 9, 2008)

*How I would split them maybe*

You have double hive bodies and want to split them. Make sure you have a nearly equal amount of brood in both hive bodies. Usally the brood pattern oval shaped so the queen has laid in both boxes. But what ever see to it there is brood in both boxes and they are strong and building up. Now that you have the hives you want. Like I say the rest is stupid easy. Simply use Bee-Go and fume boards like you were robbing honey to drive the bees to the lower box, place and excluder between them and go home. Tomorrow we come back and the bees have moved back up except our queen. Guess where she's at; yep bottom hive. Now take the top ones your increases off and to another location and when the queens get there put her in. If you have the queens already give them a couple days to realize they are queenless then do it. I live in Georgia and we use queen cells instead of bred queens usally I call had check availabilty before we split and place the order where I know I'll have them. I like the cells because of the lower cost and the fact that I get a diffrent beed of queen mixed with our line of bees after being bred.

There are as many ways to split and increase hives as there are stars. Well maybe a few less stars than increasing bee hive tactics but you get the idea. And that's not the only way I do it that's just one way. When I do it like that we are making over 100 at the time pretty much splitting the whole yard and moving all the new ones to Florida watermelon fields.


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## jesuslives31548 (May 10, 2008)

Good method, will try that this year. I have had great success doing as I described earlier. Kind of the same method except I don’t use the excluder. But I like learning new things...


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## fatscher (Apr 18, 2008)

Grant said:


> The fastest, cheapest and easiest way would be to steal someone else's hives under the cover of nightfall.


I am rolling on the floor laughing my butt off! It probably IS the fastest, cheapest and easiest method in the short term, but boy would you sure pay...and pay dearly later on (long arm of the law thing)... ...not that I would ever know!


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## WAB (Jun 11, 2008)

Mathispollenators said:


> You have double hive bodies and want to split them. Make sure you have a nearly equal amount of brood in both hive bodies. Usally the brood pattern oval shaped so the queen has laid in both boxes. But what ever see to it there is brood in both boxes and they are strong and building up. Now that you have the hives you want. Like I say the rest is stupid easy. Simply use Bee-Go and fume boards like you were robbing honey to drive the bees to the lower box, place and excluder between them and go home. Tomorrow we come back and the bees have moved back up except our queen. Guess where she's at; yep bottom hive. Now take the top ones your increases off and to another location and when the queens get there put her in. If you have the queens already give them a couple days to realize they are queenless then do it. I live in Georgia and we use queen cells instead of bred queens usally I call had check availabilty before we split and place the order where I know I'll have them. I like the cells because of the lower cost and the fact that I get a diffrent beed of queen mixed with our line of bees after being bred.
> 
> There are as many ways to split and increase hives as there are stars. Well maybe a few less stars than increasing bee hive tactics but you get the idea. And that's not the only way I do it that's just one way. When I do it like that we are making over 100 at the time pretty much splitting the whole yard and moving all the new ones to Florida watermelon fields.



This sounds like the way to go. Thanks!

WAB


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