in a world brimming with complexity few creatures
embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless
precision she dances from bloom to bloom each
motion guided by millennia upon millennia of
instinct each act in service to the whole and
then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist,
part poet, they move along their hives with the
efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to
the bees' needs as best they can comprehend,
and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the
Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing
like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their
journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Be Keeping
presented by Man Lake. By the way, if you haven't
yet, please subscribe to and follow the show,
tell your friends about it, and click on over
to BeLoveBekeeping .com to sign up for our free
newsletter. Today is gonna be a whole lot of
fun. Our guest is a commercial beekeeper who's
going to talk with us all about splitting hives
and his two favorite methods for doing that.
He also has a great wild and crazy beekeeping
story. But first there have been some crazy things
in the news recently and I wanted to share just
one of them. Have you ever heard of a beekeeper
going to jail for how they were keeping bees?
Hey, I've been following this story for the last
three years and it's finally come to a conclusion.
Here's the headline. Beekeeper jailed after unleashing
swarm during eviction. So here's what happened.
Law enforcement was trying to serve eviction
papers on the owner of a 1 .9 million dollar
home in Massachusetts. when a beekeeper arrived
with a truckload of beehives and began opening
them in the driveway. I know, sounds pretty awesome.
Ah, but not so quick. Deputies on the scene quickly
realized what was happening. Quote, hey, hey,
hey, she has a truck full of bees, one deputy
said, according to video, prompting another to
respond. What the? In a court affidavit, it turns
out the beekeeper said that she intended to let
the bees forage on the lovely flowering landscape.
Well, maybe protesting the eviction at the same
time. But as deputies attempted to intervene,
hives were knocked over, releasing hundreds,
thousands of bees that repeatedly stung officers
and sheriff staff. One person was even hospitalized.
Others suffered stings to the face and head.
Prosecutors said the bees were effectively used
as a weapon. A jury agreed, convicting the woman
of multiple misdemeanor counts, including assault
and reckless conduct, while acquitting her of
some more serious felony charges. She was sentenced
to six months in county jail, though her lawyer
said she had already spent months in custody
and would likely serve only a short remaining
term. The sheriff said this is unlike anything
our team has ever experienced. The woman's lawyer
said, She had been trying to stop the eviction
of a friend undergoing cancer treatment, describing
her actions as driven by concern over quote,
the humiliation and devastation of going through
an eviction. During the confrontation, deputies
ultimately tackled and arrested her as bees swarmed
the property. officials said the incident endangered
both law enforcement and nearby residents noting
that thousands of bees had also died during the
chaos. All right we're not here to condone or
condemn what happened but you should know this
your bees can be considered a weapon and you
are responsible for them so be smart and be responsible.
I'd like to welcome to the show today Seth Homer
who's coming to us from Utah and Good morning,
Seth. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing wonderful.
Thank you Have you ever been on one of these
crazy podcasts before? You know, this is a first
so I'm a little little nervous, you know, but
a little excited same time so I'll tell you something
that will help your nerves and that is you know
ten times more about beekeeping than the host
here does so Well, I don't know about that there's
things you probably know that I don't know as
well. So we're just here to have a good chat
and you guys do some really great social media
and email and stuff and had recently posted some
step -by -step things about splitting hives and
it's that time of the year. We're recording here
at the very end of April 2026. This will be coming
out probably mid -May and so I thought You know,
this is a topic we ought to just really jump
into and take as deep a dive as we can. So you're
going to be on the spot for a bunch of that,
Seth. Before we do, I'd love to hear a little
bit about your family business and how you became
a part of it. Where did beekeeping start with?
Because I don't think you're multi -generational,
you know, like 100 year beekeepers. No, we're
not. It all started with my dad. I want to say
13 years ago or so. My dad was just a hobbyist.
He just wanted to get into bees. He was in a
gardening class and kind of overheard a conversation
about bees and so it kind of piqued his interest
and he realized that he had some lack of... the
buzz, you know, the sound in his cherry tree.
And so that kind of piqued his radars, you know,
the antennas turned off. And anyway, so he got
a hive and he kind of just kind of just learned
like everybody else. Back then, you know, YouTube
was just starting. And so there was a lot of
information, a lot of people he was watching
knew just about as much as he did. There were
a few beekeepers like David Burns who kind of
was his little mentor, I guess, if you will.
Anyway, so he just kind of grew from one hive
and split the next year and grew. And every year
he just split and grew a little bit more. Got
to a point where he had bees in other people's
backyards and he paid some rent of honey for
them to have them there. And so he kind of started
selling honey at the farmer's markets and kind
of made that a little business and got to a point
where he sent some of his hives to California
with a commercial operation. And he joined them.
He went with them just to see how it all worked.
And he kind of just caught the bug and thought,
hey, man, this is something I could probably
do. But for his age, he's like, if I was 20 years
younger, I'd jump in and do this. But I'm not.
And so that's when he approached me with it.
I honestly didn't really know a lot about bees.
I didn't know about that world. It was totally
new, but it was something interesting. And so
I thought I'd give it a go. And so we went up
and we spent a lot of time with this commercial
operation just to kind of get my hands dirty
and be in that environment and try to understand
how things worked. So, and it was just super
fascinating. I just fell in love with it. And,
and from there, I just, you know, I wanted to,
I wanted to do that and be a part of that, whatever
that was. And so, bought a couple hundred hives
together. You know, we made our first splits
and we, we, there's a lot of trials, lots of
failures and obviously lots of, there's a big
learning curve, especially starting with that
many hives to get, to get going. But it was lots
of fun and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
That's kind of how we started. My dad, he was
really big on teaching and kind of sharing his,
you know, he felt that there wasn't a lot of
people around in the community that provided
that education. And so he kind of started doing
his own little education classes and from there
he kind of just took off. So we've always had
this. kind of this mission of just helping and
educating others based off of our failures and
our successes. We want everybody to have that
success and we know that our way is not the only
way. We tell our beekeeping students all the
time like what we're doing is not the only path.
There's so many different ways to keep bees but
there's a handful of fundamentals and principles
that are the same. How you complete and how you
attain those principles is up to you. And so
probably give them some direction, some guidance.
We've now grown, we're usually close to 950 colonies
by the peak of the summer. We've grown to that
point, but we still have that same mission and
we really love sharing what we know and to help
somebody out. then awesome. It's actually been
kind of a really cool because we have so many
people that kind of come into your path as we
were growing because of our challenges and the
you know financially I mean we're scraping by.
My dad's really good at he's a baby groomer and
so wherever you can save money he's saving it.
Well that brings up a question that I had do
you guys build all your own boxes or do you buy
them? When we first started, we would buy them
pre -cut and I would sit in my garage during
the off season and I would just be up there,
get my music going, pounding away, nailing and
gluing the boxes and all the frames and my garage
would just be stacked full of boxes and frames.
And we would wait until we'd try to get orders
from our customers and wait until the temperatures
were right. And once we hit above 50 degrees,
we'd go out and stack our boxes up in the driveway,
and we'd paint the tower of boxes. It felt like
we're always a step behind. We're always playing
catch up. The weather sometimes made it challenging.
but at the same time, it made it a fun journey.
Something to look back on, that was crazy that
we were able to do all that, but we did it. Yeah,
that's awesome. And it seems like, and just from
my kind of outside perspective, some commercial
beekeepers, they've got like 10 ,000 hives. Okay,
and so they're taking them out to pollination
They're doing their splits or doing all that
stuff and you guys are doing those things too
But you also have a good online presence and
you have a store and you're making things like
soap I just bought some the other day and salves
and all that kind of stuff and your sharing of
knowledge you really do And that's one great
thing about beekeepers in general, but you guys
really live it. I noticed on your website I'm
looking at it on my other computer over here
You've got a whole blog post about mite testing,
and you've got a recipe for syrup, and for, what
is this other thing? Honey Bee Health recipe,
what's that? Honey Bee Healthy, it's a feeding
stimulant. Makes the syrup a little more palatable
for the bees, tracks them for spring buildup.
So anyway you're sharing a lot of stuff and I
appreciate it but I don't want to take any more
time on that. I want to jump right into splits.
For those in the world that are in swarming season
right now or are coming into it soon, let's talk
about first swarm management because there are
some people that are just saying I'm a hobbyist.
I've got my half dozen hives. I'm maxed out.
I don't want more. I don't want to do splits.
But I also don't want to lose a ton of bees to
swarming. So what advice do you have for people
in that situation first? Well, I think the first
thing is they need to try to figure out what
their goals are. Where do they want to be? And
one of the things that we mention and teach Also
in our classes is beekeeping is really expensive
and it can be really an expensive hobby. And
so there's a few different things that you can
do to help support and sustain your little apiary.
One of those things is you could sell your own
bees. So obviously when you get to a point, that
point where you're just like, I'm done growing.
I want to stay where I'm at. Then you got to
start making some choices. There's multiple things
you can do. Like I said, you can pull splits,
you can sell them. There's ways to manage your
bees to keep them intact as far as giving them
space to grow and build up into their colony.
So you're not losing bees. That's a hard thing
for me to take is people letting their bees just
swarm because they don't know what to do and
they don't know how to. how to manage that. I
mean, they're freebies for somebody else, I guess,
but it can cause problems for the neighbors.
You know, we've had our own problems when we've,
our first year anyway, we had to move on prematurely
and we lost some swarms and we got into some
neighboring homes and we had to deal with all
that. So it can be problematic, but there are
things that you can do to mitigate those swarms
and splitting them and Again, a hive is just
under that state. When a hive gets congested,
they want to swarm. And in general, it's a good
thing. It's what bees do. You're not a bad beekeeper
if your bees want to go swarm. Don't take it
personally. They're not leaving you. They're
doing what nature taught them to do, which is
reproduce and make a whole other colony. And
yes, and it can be healthy for them. The brew
break can be good for them and things like that.
So, all right. Let's talk about, I mean, there's
a lot of different ways to do splits. What's
your favorite way? My favorite way, honestly,
with what we're doing, I love, it's kind of a
walk away split before we move our B's. And obviously
this doesn't totally apply to all the hobbyists.
But for me, I like the method where I actually
will take. take your top box or second brood
box and I will put an empty box on the bottom
and I'll go through and I'll take all those frames
from that top brood box and I'll shake them down
into the bottom box. I'll do that with the whole
second brood box. I know the queen's in the bottom
and I'll put a queen's scooter down and then
I'll put that second brood box back onto the
hive. Now I can just go through, I know the queen's
in the bottom, I can just go through and I can,
the bees will come back up through the queen
excluder, you know, populate that brood, second
brood nest. And now I can just pull that box,
move it to another spot. And usually when I'm
doing this, we're actually doing it right before
we move our bees to a new yard. And so that way
they haven't oriented themselves to one location.
So I can just set that hive down and I can just
move it right across from each other. I know
I can just put a queen in and they're good to
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that's a quick way. You don't really have to
think about it. You don't have to know about
where the queen's at. Obviously, I like to divide
up the resources as much as possible. Well, you
said you know the queen is in the bottom box.
So you've got to figure that part out at least.
If I take everything and just shake them down
to the bottom. Oh, OK. Every single bee, including
the queen, so you know she's in the bottom. Do
you care if there's queen cells in the top or
the bottom? Absolutely. Yeah, that's something
usually I like to do this before we get to that
point as much as possible. Obviously, you know,
some eyes are a little bit quicker in their spring
buildup. And so if I can catch them soon enough
where they don't have queen cells, then that's
ideal time. But regardless, I usually will crack
the hive open. look underneath you know smoke
them so I can see if there's queen cells being
built if there are then absolutely I'm going
through every frame and making sure that I'm
not splitting them with queen cells in the hive
because if they get to that point that they have
queen cells sometimes you can't stop them they're
in motion of swarming regardless and sometimes
you still can lose them and so you just got to
be really thorough if you do see queen cells.
Unless you want them to raise a new queen, then
that's an option too. And as a commercial beekeeper,
you probably feel like you don't really have
time for that. No. Because if they're raising
their own queen, how long of a brood break is
there going to be? Well, the month that she's
gone, at least a month, five weeks, you're not
going to have any new... that brood's capped
from her egg to to laying you know it's about
28 days and then you got another three weeks
until her her new offspring her brood starts
hatching out so you got a little while until
you got some new things coming in. And I've done
some of those true walk away splits where I will
take the queen and half the bees Move them someplace
make sure that the other half that are left behind
Whether you were talking about a top box and
a bottom box, but whichever one that is that's
left behind make sure it has queen cells and
They're they're gonna make a queen and hopefully
she gets mated properly Yeah, but you have to
realize if you do that versus taking a queen,
buying a queen, however you get your queen, and
put it in there and have them adopt her, you're
losing six to eight weeks worth of creating honey
and building up and doing everything that they
do. So there's not a right way and a wrong way.
There's different ways to do it, but realize
what the consequences are and those aren't all
negative. I don't mind it doing it that way because
I'm not a commercial beekeeper. I'm not trying
to make hundreds and hundreds of gallons of honey
every year. And so if I feel like doing it that
way, I can. And if I'm in a different situation,
it doesn't make sense. So how far away does someone
need to move that split? You know, I usually
say at least a mile if possible. I've heard people
saying you got to move it three miles. I don't
think that's not that big of a deal as far as
moving it around that far. But if you move it
around a mile, you're usually okay. You might
want to close them off, keep them in the hive.
You can always put some obstruction in front
of their hive. I mean, they're in a different
environment anyway, so they should reorient.
But with what we've done, a mile seems to work
just fine. A lot of people don't have that luxury.
And so I've asked that question of a lot of different
people, and I get a lot of different answers.
Personally, I've been okay doing it with a lot
less distance than that, but I would move it
further if I could. Yeah. Well, that's the distance.
I mean, you can split your hive and put it right
next to each other. You can make that work. There's
some things I like to rotate the hive a little
bit so the entrance is facing a different way.
The hive that you move over to the new spot,
you got to make sure that you have plenty of
nurse bees in there. When you make your split,
obviously all the foragers are going to fly back
to the mother hive and so you got to have enough
nurse bees that will stay put, take care of that
brood so you don't get that off balance of bee
population where one split might... kind of struggle
or maybe be a lot slower because a lot of bees
flew back so you definitely make a split and
make that work without having to move them over
a mile for sure. So let's say you make your split
you've done everything right you know where the
queen is you've put a new queen over here and
you've done made sure there's enough nurse bees
everywhere and all that kind of stuff. Now, when
should you go back and check on them and make
sure that you've had success here? I like to
make sure within a week's time, I like to go
back just to see how their bee population is
doing. And you could probably go back even a
little bit sooner and shake more bees over if
you need to. I think a lot of that kind of sometimes
depends on the weather. If it's cold, like right
now, I mean, we've had this such a warm season
and all of a sudden now we have got these cold
spells coming in. And if you did a split before
we hit our cold spell, well, I want to make sure
that the brood is well taken care of and there's
enough population in there. And so I'd like to
go in a little bit earlier, within a few days,
probably just to see if a lot of the bees stayed
put. But as far as making sure, see if they're
successful, that all entails whether or not you're
letting them raise a new queen. If you just put
in a new queen, a caged queen, well, I want to
get in there a little bit earlier, make sure
the queen was released. I want to make sure she's
laying within a week's time. So there's not that
loss of period. If something happens, and a lot
of beekeepers tend to, like when you're doing
something new like this, when you're doing a
split or anything in your hive, it's important
to get back. and make sure things work out sooner
than later. It's really hard to recover from,
for example, a bee package. When people introduce
a bee package, you know, they tend to, sometimes
they wait a little too long to go in and check
to see if their queen got out or she's laying.
And then, you know, two weeks pass and nothing
happened or something, your queen died or whatever
it is. And you just lost all that time, that
buildup. of, you know, in that hive. So same
thing with the split. We want to make sure things
are going right. If we're raising a queen, well
then we need to make a little calendar of how
much time it's going to take for that queen,
you know, it's capped. And so I know from her
being capped, I got eight days or so until she's
hatching. And then I know two weeks, you know,
within 14, 16 days after that. she's laying eggs,
and so you kind of have to keep track. I like
to make sure you write things down. So if you
do have questions, you can ask somebody, but
you got to have some somewhere to fall back on
and give them some information so you can make
an educated guess on what's going on in the hive.
That keeping track, I admit I'm not very good
at it, but I know how important it is because
those things that you just described, of going
from a capped queen cell to the timing of her
hatching, getting mated, coming back and laying
eggs. If you don't keep track of the day that
you saw that, the day you made the split, the
day you saw the cap cell, et cetera, it's pretty
hard to know if your hive is on track or not.
Yeah. Yeah. And so it could be too late and then
you run into a laying worker. Yeah. Yeah, are
you able to tell by looking at a queen in this
split hive? Let's say it was a true walkaway
split and like we've been talking about they're
raising their own queen Are you able to tell
if that queen is a virgin or a mated queen? I
usually can tell have a pretty good guess whether
she's a virgin Mated queen. Yeah, I mean they
they're definitely the size of the body the way
that they move is totally different. Virgin Queen,
she kind of runs around with no purpose. She's
a little faster and her body's a little smaller.
Her abdomen has not grown and blown up. And so
I can usually say I can tell between a Maided
Queen and a Virgin Queen. So what does the Maided
Queen look like and how does she move in contrast?
Well, a maiden queen, obviously, she's going
to be plump and her abdomen is going to be swollen.
She moves around with more purpose. She's looking
for somewhere to lay. The bees are actually attending
to her or a virgin queen. Again, she's just kind
of running around. Or a maiden queen, they're
going to be feeding her, grooming her. She's
a little slower moving. Again, she has purpose
at that time. So definitely there's a distinction
there. Are you familiar with some of the other
splitting techniques? Can you talk to any of
them? Yeah, I mean we've done obviously pulling
a nuke out, just making a small split. Can you
go through that in more detail? Sure. So when
we're pulling splits off, just a little five
frame nuke, I'm looking for When I do the split
I want some food frames that usually are a couple
food frames Give them some honey and some pollen
or a mix of both I'm giving them two brood frames
and obviously when you're doing your own split
You can give them as many brood frames as you
want at least I'd give them at least two two
frames of brood preferably not have eggs So it's
older larvae or capped brood if you give them
capped brood, the hive has to do less to take
care of that brood. So there's less energy, there's
less food consumption, they don't have to work
as hard as a small little colony to take care
of that brood. So I like to try to get capped
brood if possible, or if not, older brood, open
brood. So two frames of brood, and then I usually
give them an empty frame. This is when we're
making our nukes up for our customers. This is
what we like to do. And so I give them those
frames and I'm pulling those bees out with them,
making sure the queen's not there, making sure
there's no queen cells unless you want to raise
a queen. If you're wanting to raise a queen,
I would suggest making sure the queen cell is
almost capped. Again, it's less work for the
bees to have to produce that royal jelly and
make a good queen. So a strong hive can obviously
make better queens. And I shake, get some nurse
bees, so frames of open brood. So I take those
bees and I shake those extra bees into that nuc,
into that split. So there's plenty of extra nurse
bees in there. And then that's it. You either
add a queen or you can let them finish off that
nuc they're raising. That's kind of our method.
And then when we're making our splits, we'll
actually put them, place them in a yard where
they can... fly and forge, and we actually let
our queens, our caged queens get out. We make
sure that they're proven, that they're laying.
So it takes a couple extra two to three weeks
until they're actually prepped and ready before
we hand them out to our customers. But aside
from that, yeah, pulling it, making a split yourself,
and that's kind of how we make those nukes. You
make it all sound really easy. It's a lot of
work. Nothing is as easy as it sounds like, and
it's a lot of work. How many nukes are you guys
creating every year? Usually just a couple hundred.
Enough to satisfy me. We could probably make
a lot more, but we want to make sure that we
got enough for any losses that we have or any
growth that we want to make. It's kind of interesting
that it's way easier to make bees than it is
to keep them alive. And you can make bees all
day long, pulling splits. Bees are really resilient
and they can grow, I mean, just off a frame of
brood and a handful of bees. You know, give them
a queen and they'll get going. And so you could
do a lot with bees, but usually the trick is
keeping them alive. That's where it's sometimes
can be a little tricky. And we don't even have
time to talk about Varroa and everything else
today. We talk about that plenty here. Hey, last
thing. And I'm sorry, I didn't warn you this
ahead of time. But on this show, every guest
has the opportunity to talk about a wild and
crazy beekeeping story that they've had. And
that can be anything just super out of the ordinary
or painful or embarrassing or anything kind of
crazy that makes this so fun. Can you think of
something? My first year into this. I kind of
volunteered to do the, you know, manning the
forklift and to unload our truck of bees. At
the end of our first year, we were getting them
back in the spring, that's what it was. And I
was unloading the hives and we're doing it at
night. We're using the skid steer, so it's a
little different than, you know, your standard
forklifts that they had, but it's a little more
bouncier. And as I was driving along and unloading,
everything is so new and you're just trying to
figure things out. And so, and when you're under
pressure of trying to unload Bezo off of a truck,
you know, your tents, your mouth, you know, I
feel like I need to wear a mouth guard. And as
I was driving around, the forks kind of tend
to get a little closer together. And I wasn't
really paying attention to that. And I went to
go lift him up. And at the time I was only, I
was taking all three. three pallets that are
too deep high off of the truck at the same time.
Now you could do that if you have the right forklift
and the, you know, the machine I was using, it
was not good. I should have taken, you know,
two off first and then one and it's a little
more manageable that way. But I took all three
off and that's coming back. And because my forks
were in and not spread out, it was a little topsy
turvy. And so I pulled out and Silly me. I started
just going and I just hit just this the bump
just just enough where that thing just toppled
over and I just felt so like so bad embarrassed
Just I didn't know I mean I was just and then
I I wasn't prepared for it I mean, I wish I had
a suit at the time, but I just had a jacket and
my jeans on and so but we had to get in there
and Take them all up. We're getting stung. We're
just getting just hammered. That was kind of
an eye -opening experience knowing what not to
do the next time. You know, we went through all
those hives and luckily enough we didn't kill
any of those queens, which I was super surprised.
But that was an eye -opening experience for me.
I can tell you learned from it. That's the key.
You learned. Hey, so if people want to find you,
it's homershoneybee .com. Yeah, homershoneybee
.com. Hey, you can find us. We also have our
Instagram, where we just started putting on our
YouTube channel. And we're also doing a bunch
of series, like we're doing more of this swarm
series that's coming up. And so more videos to
come. Obviously, like I said before, we love
educating, we love making this content. To help
whoever, it might help. All right. Appreciate
you being with me today, Seth. Yeah, thanks for
having me on. Thanks, Eric. Thanks again for
joining us on Be Love, Be Keeping presented by
Manlike. Another big thank you goes to Vita B
Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control
Ranger products includes Epistan, Epigard, and
now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acids Trips.
Hey thanks a lot guys. And if you haven't yet,
please subscribe to and follow the show, tell
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have a guest suggestion, or topic you'd like
discussed on the show shoot me an email eric
at be love beekeeping .com and remember if you're
not just in it for the honey or the money you're
in it for the love see you next week