May I have your attention, please? The following
is not the real Jeff Fox review. If you create
more splits than a divorce lawyer, you might
be a beekeeper. If you dream of your life ending
the same way as a drone bees, Welcome, welcome
to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our good friends
at Man Lake. Today, our guest is Frank LaCotta,
and we'll be talking all about splitting your
colonies. When to do it, why, and even how to
do it. If you're a new beekeeper, this is vital
information. And if you're a seasoned pro, you
still may learn something from Frank's years
of experience. But first, some honeybee fun facts.
Did you know? that honeybees have a sense of
smell 50 times more powerful than a dog? Did
you know that honeybees can taste with their
feet? Wait a minute, I'm not so sure about this
one. But what I'm reading here says the claws
on a honeybee's foot are especially attuned to
salt. Did you know that honeybees like caffeine?
Studies have shown that caffeine consumption
actually improves honeybee's memory and learning
capabilities. And finally, did you know that
a queen bee's stinger is smooth, unlike a worker
bee's which is barbed? This allows her to sting
multiple times and survive. I'd always been told
that queens don't sting and it's true, they rarely
sting people. They primarily use their stingers
to defend themselves or to be aggressive against
other queen bees, especially rival queens. And
that's why their stingers are designed to sting
multiple times without it killing them. Before
we jump into it, I'd like to give a quick shout
out to V2B Health for their support of this podcast.
Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes
Apistan, Apigard, and now Veroxan Extended Release
Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys. Now, let's have
a chat with Frank. I'd like to welcome to the
show today, Frank LaCotta, coming to us all the
way from, are you in Pennsylvania? Yes, I'm in
Northeastern Pennsylvania. Well, it looks like
you're in a beautiful cabin. I'm just trying
to picture the snow, the mountains, that kind
of stuff. But it's springtime. Right. That's
long gone. And today we're talking about a spring
subject, which is splits. Everybody's heard about
this. Some people are experts at this. Some people
are new to beekeeping that are listening and
have no idea what we're talking about. So, Frank,
being the expert that you are and you were with
Man Lake for years, weren't you? I was with Man
Lake for about just over 10 years. It was actually
the twilight of my career. I was working on Wall
Street, pretty much a financial district most
of my career. That's an adjustment. Yes. Wow.
Congratulations. Thanks. I want to start with
the first part of what's going on with splits.
And the first question that I have for those
that don't know, why do we want to do a split?
And when is a good time? Okay, the reason why
we want to do a split is bees have this natural
instinct to propagate themselves. One way of
doing that, they have a few ways, but one way
is by swarming, where that's where 60 % of the
bees in the old queen actually leave the hive.
That's where you see them hanging on that post
or that bush or that house or whatever. the foragers
or the scouts go out and find a new location.
That is something that happens almost with every
overwintered hive. So I tell most beekeepers,
if you have an overwintered hive is almost for
sure going to swarm on you in the springtime.
The ramifications of that are you lose your queen.
You may or may not get a new queen based on if
she, the new queens are raising fly out and they
may make it back. Okay. but it sets your hive
back, of course. So you may or may not get any
spring honey. You might get a little bit. You
might get none because it takes him a while to
build up again. So as a beekeeper, we want to
take control of that. Rather than let those bees
swarm, we do what we call a split, which we do
it right. The bees believe they swarmed and we
can control those splits to the point where we
do not lose our bees. Better for us. to lose
the bee or to keep the bees with that split than
to lose them in a tree or, you know, wherever.
And frankly, it can be better for the bees, too,
because a lot of swarms that leave don't live.
Absolutely true. If they can't find a place to
make that new home or they don't have time to
build up, depending what time of year they leave.
Yes, those swarms just may not make it. So for
us and as good beekeepers, It behooves us to
do these splits because we can replace our winter
losses, our dead outs with these splits. We can
grow our apiary if that's what we choose to do,
or you may just make a nuke out of that split
and sell it off and make some money back. We
know that beekeeping is not cheap. So there are
a lot of reasons that we want to do that. Yeah,
it's good all the way around. All right, let's
talk about wind. I mean, you and I are in colder
climates, but Some people in the US, and we have
listeners all over the world, if you're in an
even warmer climate, you may be past the best
time to split already. If you're in a cold climate,
it's coming right up. Well, I'll agree with you
somewhat on that. We might be too late. We may
not, because there's another time of year when
we can make splits. But we'll get to that. But
spring splits, you're right. We want to get into
our bees when the weather is warm enough for
us to go in there and start checking brood, right?
That's what we're going to take survey of what's
going on in that hive. And we're going to look
for a few things. The main thing is congestion
in that colony. Congestion is not how many bees
are in there. It's when that queen starts running
out of space to lay eggs because they're bringing
in a lot of wet nectar. You'll see in that brood
nest, it's filled with wet nectar and a lot of
brood. Once they get that, that can trigger the
swarm instinct. So as beekeepers, we're going
to go in there, we're going to monitor that,
right? And we're going to see how much cap brood
they have in there, that brood nest is growing,
how many bees are in there, how much room is
in the brood area for those bees. And that's
when we're going to determine when we want to
make those splits. We don't typically want to
wait till the bees start thinking, hey, I'm going
to swarm and start making swarm cells. We want
to do it before that. For instance, in my area,
usually about the 15th of April, I know I have
to go in there and start checking brood, right?
Because the bees need a few things, obviously.
They need some brood going before they're going
to swarm. They also need drones. They will not
swarm without drones. They need drones, obviously,
for those virgin queens they're making. So we
look at those drones. When we start seeing drones
in that colony and a lot of brood, a lot of bees,
congestion, then we know it's time to maybe make
that split before the bees do it. So why don't
we wait to see swarm cells before we do that?
Well, the problem with that is if you wait too
long and they have capped swarm cells, you can
come in and make that split no matter what, or
you cut those swarm cells out, which is what
a lot of people do. If there's one capped swarm
cell in there, the bees are going to swarm anyway
on you. And now you've got what we call a hopelessly
queenless condition, which is something very
common to new beekeepers. They don't realize
that they think cutting out all those swarm cells
will stop them. It won't in a lot of cases. So
it's better for us to be proactive and make that
split. We can always rejoin that split with the
mother call me later if we want. All right. So
we've talked about timing. I know a lot of beekeepers
go online and they look at videos and they see
all kinds of different sorts of splitting techniques
that there are out there. I know you have a favorite.
Will you tell us before you jump into your favorite?
Just name some of the others that you know of.
What options do we have? Well, there's walk away
splits. There are the split that I do where I
know where the queen is. The walk away is one
where you don't know which box the queen is in.
let the bees make their own. You basically just
split the hive in half, right? Right. Or you
can, you know, there are other ways where you
actually just pull enough brood and nurse bees
off to make a nuke and replace the comb you pulled
with drawn comb, not foundation, into the mother
colony and, and let the bees, you know, continue
on. You just pull that nuke off. You may add
a queen to it. You may just have a young one
day old larva in there where let the bees make
their own in that nuke. There are a lot of ways
to do it. If you get a hive that you're too late
and it's got all kinds of queen cells in there,
cap queen cells, you can pull out a couple of
frames, three frames and put it in a new box.
Another three, put it in another, you could split
that colony up into three, four or five nukes
and then wait a month, see which ones made queens.
If they didn't, you could rejoin the ones that
didn't, but the ones that did. So there are a
lot of options and making nukes and splits is
much easier than the average beekeeper thinks.
Really really easy and I love your simple method
and I think you called it the easy split or something
like that Also a shakedown split. Yeah Something
I forget what it there's all kinds of names for
it. You can trademark it make t -shirts if you
want. Yeah Well, I didn't invent it. I've seen
it. I saw it somewhere else as well when I was
much younger I just call it the the shake split
because the simplest way to describe it is we've
got it in this case, say two deeps and the bees,
we've got a lot of bees. We've got a lot of brood.
They are absolutely thinking, you know, getting
to the point where they're going to think about
swarming. Where's my queen? I don't want to pull
every single frame looking for my queen. What
I'll do typically is I'll balance those boxes.
So I'm going to, maybe the day before I'm going
to make that split, I'm going to go through there
and I'm going to make sure that I have some very,
very young larva in the top box, mostly open.
brood, but I want a couple of very young ones.
And I'm going to have a couple of frames of cat
brood in there as well. The reason why I want
the young larva in there is because that's where
the nurse bees are going to go to and take care
of. So I prep my boxes the day ahead. I wait
a day and I come back. By prepping, you mean
you're actually moving frames around so that
your top box looks like this thing that you're
explaining. Correct. I want to put the majority
of the majority of my cat brood in the bottom
box. and the majority of my open brood in the
top box. And I'm going to come back the next
day and I'm going to have an extra empty box
sitting on the ground next to me. I'm going to
pull every frame out of the top box, shake those
bees off of it, look it over just to make sure
that queen's not on there, put it in that box
on the ground. I'll do that with every frame
until that top box is empty. All my frames are
in the box in the ground. They contain nothing
but honey and all kinds of brood, whether it
be eggs, larva, cat brood. That's it. Maybe,
you know, the occasional bee is still on there,
but the queen certainly isn't. I'm going to take
the top box on that hive, shake it, whatever
bees are on the inside of that box, shake them
all down. Take that box off. Now I've got a single
bee and a lot of bees in there. I have my smoker
going. If I lightly smoke those bees, they're
all going to go down into that bottom box. I'm
going to put a queen excluder on top of there
and take that box from the ground with all the
brood, put it back on top of that colony and
close it up. And I'm going to leave it overnight.
What's going to happen is with all that open
brood up top, all the nurse bees are going to
go up to that box. And that's what I want for
that split, those nurse bees. And I know my queen
is down in the bottom box. She's under the queen
excluder. So I'm going to come back the next
day. I'm going to have my hive stand ready to
go. my bottom board, my lids, I'm going to take
that box off, I'm going to move it over to the
new location, and the mother colony that I took
that box from, I'm going to remove the queen
excluder and put another deep on top of that
box. So now the bees have room to expand up into
there. The swarm instinct or pressure has been
taken off that mother colony and now I've got
a second colony. Let me just take a minute here
to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. One
of the things I love about Man Lake is their
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at beekeeping. One great resource is their mobile
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It's free, so download the Man Lake app today.
And speaking of shopping, don't forget your discount
code MLBlove10. It's in the show notes. For $10
off your first $100 dollar purchase. Now, back
to the guest. most of the day and put that in
near the end of the day into that new split and
let them get used to that queen and let her out,
you know, five, six days later. Now I've got
two functioning colonies with laying queens.
If I let the bees raise the queen, it's fine,
but it's going to take another 30 days before
she's back in laying. And if there's any issues
with her not making it back to the colony, well,
then I've got to start again or I could rejoin
that with the original hive. So I tend to buy
queens myself in the springtime. Is it true that
split that you've just talked about making that
you're going to put someplace else, does it really
need to be two to three miles away? No, we're
moving mostly nurse bees across. So the nurse
bees have never left the colony. As long as there's
a queen in there, they'll stay. Any foragers
you moved in with that colony, they'll fly out.
They'll come back to the mother colony. What
I tend to do to ensure that a lot of bees stay
in there and they don't drift out I will close
that hive up for a couple of days I'll put that
queen in there and then I'll stuff the entrance
of my hive with grass I'll pull grass and stuff
the entrance closed, you know, it's usually the
springtime. It's cool enough They're not gonna
overheat in there. I've got a feeder on there
so they're able to get syrup and After two three
days that grass naturally will wilt on its own
and the bees will start coming and going By then,
they've established that this is their hive.
They won't drift back to the mother colony. If
you didn't put a new queen in that box, then
are you in the same situation or are you going
to start losing nurse bees or are they going
to be patient for a month? I would do the same
thing. I would close it up with grass, but I
would absolutely make sure I've got syrup in
there and at least a few frames if I'm going
to let them raise a queen. I want a few frames
with a lot of pollen in there because To raise
a queen, they've got to make royal jelly. Royal
jelly comes from a gland in those bees, in the
nurse bee's head. But to make royal jelly, they
must consume bee bread. Bee bread is a mixture
of pollen and nectar. So I'm going to make sure
they have plenty of both, if I'm going to let
them raise a queen. And after, they'll start
raising a queen almost immediately. Within a
few hours, they know they're queen -less, they'll
start raising a queen. So after a day or so,
when that grass starts swelting, they're not
going anywhere. They're staying in that colony.
I have a lot of success doing that. I rarely
lose colonies when I do that. And they don't
need to be two to three miles apart. No, because
most people, let's be honest, I happen to have
12 or 13 different locations, but the average
hobby beekeeper does not. They have one place,
one apiary. So no, all you have to do is close
it up. Close the hive up for a few days. I'm
glad to hear that. You mentioned another time
of year that's also good for doing splits. Let's
talk about that. All right. So we all know we
could do a spring split and people do it a lot.
But the other time we could do it that I do it
is when the nectar flow is in full, you know,
raging, which in my area is June. They're bringing
in a lot of nectar. I've got a lot of bees in
that colony. And I go back to this is when I
make my my nukes to overwinter. I overwinter
a lot of nukes. So to do that, I got thinking
about it one time and I thought, well, my nectar
flows over the first week of July. It takes from
egg to emerging bee is 21 days. Once that bee
emerges, it's another 21 days before it becomes
a forager. So any larva or egg that's laid in
the first to second week of June, By the time
that becomes a forager, my flow is over. So what
I will do is I'll go into those colonies about
the second week of June, and I'll pull off almost
all the open brood. I'll take it with the nurse
bees on there, and I'll make a lot of five -frame
nucs. And I may take, out of every hive, I could
make maybe two, maybe one and a half. And you
can combine frames from multiple colonies into
one nuc box. It doesn't matter. And I'm going
to shake a lot of bees in there, a lot of bees
into those nucs. Anything that's a forager is
going to fly out and come back to the mother
colony. So what I end up with is I end up with
my mother colony has almost no open brood in
it. So all the nectar they're bringing in is
going up to honey production. And my nucs, you
know, they've got open brood and I'm feeding
them. And what I've done, which I don't want
to buy queens this time of year, I can let the
bees raise their own, but what I tend to do is
I graft a lot of queens. So I usually, by using
the calendar and planning out my work, I have
ripe queen cells ready when I do this. So I just
come through, I wait half a day after I got these
nukes all set up, and I go through and I drop
in ripe queen cells that are gonna hatch in a
day or two. And that's how I do it. You know,
I might make 100 of them, and out of those 100,
Maybe 60 to 70 of them are successful in a month.
They have a laying queen. The other ones, I just
combine them back with another hive. It doesn't
matter. So what I've done is I've taken the pressure
off the mother colony to feed all these bees,
moved it to a nuke. So my mother colony is doing
nothing but putting up honey. And these nukes
are raising queens or, you know, and they're
starting to lay. You know, she'll go out there,
she'll mate, she'll lay. And those nukes, by
the time I get into fall, they're going to be
a double nuke, a 5 over 5 nuke. And I can take
those through the wintertime. So it's almost
like an insurance policy for me, in that if I
lose a lot of bees in the wintertime, I've got
all these nukes. So if I go into winter, instead
of going in with my normal 200 colonies, if I
go in with 200 colonies and 100 nukes or 50 nukes,
no matter what I lose, I've still got enough
bees to have my 200 colonies come spring, because
we all lose bees in the wintertime. We know that.
You make this all sound really simple it actually
is And I appreciate it, but I know it can't be
that simple It is are there things that I need
to look out for mistakes that maybe I should
avoid well Yeah, I mean I would say the most
common mistake I see people do is when they make
a nuke They don't shake enough bees into that
nuke because they get no they get a lot of foragers
in there that happen to be on the frame when
they pull it and those foragers fly back. You
need enough bees to keep that nuke, the brood
warm in there. So you should, you know, obviously
it's much better if you either find your queen
so you don't shake her into that nuke box. So
you want to find her. Once you've got her frame,
I'll go through that colony and I'll find that
frame. I'll have an empty nuke box on the side
and put just that frame in it with that queen
so I know where she is. Now I could shake a lot
of bees into that nuke I just made. The foragers
fly back. That's fine. The nurse bees stay there.
When I'm all done, I take that queen frame and
put her back in. I know she's in the mother colony,
and I know she's not in any of the nukes I made.
So that would probably be the biggest mistake
people make is they do not put enough bees in
that box. And they should, being that they're
weak, feed them syrup, feed them sugar water.
Don't give them, you give them a frame of honey.
Bees don't raise brood off of honey. They raise
brood off of nectar. They make wax off of nectar.
So... It's really quite simple. When I was much
younger, I thought it was this big complicated
thing and my mentor showed me and I was like,
wow, that's all there is to it. And from then
on, I've never been out of these. And by the
way, you've got a good YouTube video on this
and I don't very often recommend YouTube videos
because there's a lot of bad ones as well as
the good ones out there. If people want to actually
see how you do this very simple split is it just
under Frank locata or is it under man Lake? It's
under man Lake And my I don't believe on these
I think it shows two boxes one might be purple
on the ground, you know two different high bodies
that's the start of it says making a split or
something and Yeah, it shows it easy and I tend
in my in my YouTube videos. I tend to not put
a lot of Fluff around everything I get right
to the point. I don't want people to be bored
I'm just gonna do it quick and hopefully they
see how easy it is I just pulled up the video.
It is a purple box on the bottom and a yellow
one on top Yeah, there you go. So if you find
that you've got the right one. That's right.
It's under the man Lake Channel Okay Love it
anything else we need to know about splits. I
swear you've made it simpler than anyone I've
ever heard before it is very easy and you know
All I think is people need to, you know, don't
just watch me. Watch 10 other people on there
as well on YouTube. Read a few things and take
the best of everything and put it together. That's
what I did my whole career is I wouldn't just
listen to one person because we all do things
differently. I'd watch people, I'd listen to
people and I would try different things. I would
make one split this way, one another way and
see which one worked out. The only way you learn
to be keeping is to make a lot of mistakes. You
don't learn by being successful. You learn by
making mistakes your first five, 10 years, then
you become successful. So do you mean at this
point, I'm not going to make any more mistakes
because I've passed 10 years now? No, because
I've been in it over 20 years and I still make
mistakes. So we never stop. Oh, there's so much
to learn. And that's part of what I love about
it. There is. Yep. And then things change all
the time. You know, things I used to do. Even
10 years ago, I don't do anymore. I do something
different. So keep learning. Yeah, I love the
intuitiveness of it. As you were talking about,
look at 10 different videos and then use your
own intuition. Try to be in tune with your bees
to know enough, right? What's going to work best
for them, right? What I do in Pennsylvania may
not work in Texas and vice versa. So you've also
got to take your location into account and yeah.
I always tell people, try everything. That's
why it's always good to have a couple of nukes
to play with. Because if these are your, what
I call production bees, or your only two colonies,
you're not going to experiment at all. But if
you have your two colonies and you got a couple
of nukes on the side, play with them. That's
how you learn. Sounds great. Okay. It's time
for you to give us a wild and crazy story. Have
you thought of one yet? Well, yeah, we all like
to... have videos of us standing there with no
protective gear on going in our colonies, you
know, and we know that, okay, this time of year,
the bees are - Don't do it. No, don't do it.
I, you know, I was like that at one time and
my, my experience was, so I needed a frame with
some eggs on it. So I stopped it in a beer and
I thought, I'm not lighting my smoker and I'm
not going to wear my gear. I'm just going to
pop the lid real quick and just ease out a frame.
So I went to the hive. and pulled one out. The
bees were calm, pulled one out. There's no eggs
on there. Put it back in, pulled the next one.
There was none there. And the bees are starting
to come up through the frames. Pulled the third
one out, none in there. And just as I'm putting
it back, they just came at me in droves. I was
running through, it was a big garden, my neighbor's
farm. I was running through that field swatting
and running and screaming. I think I got lit
up about 40 times that afternoon, but yeah. So,
my takeaway from that was never assume that you
can go in there without gear. I always have my
jacket on now and ready to pull it up if they
turn on me. Such great advice. Frank Licata,
thanks so much. I really appreciate your time
today. Sure, Eric. Thank you very much. Thanks
again for joining us here on Be Love, Be Keeping
presented by Man Lake. Hey, if you wouldn't mind,
please take just a couple of seconds here to
follow or subscribe to this show and to share
it with a good friend. I got thinking. Have you
ever wondered how much you actually love your
bees? Tell you what, ask yourself this philosophical
question for the day. Would I keep bees even
if they didn't provide me with honey? Ponder
on that and we will see you next week.