by Texas Homesteader ~

Around the end of March RancherMan & I start thinking about splitting our beehives. Splitting a hive accomplishes 2 things – it expands the number of hives in your apiary. (yea!) But it also gives the bees a little elbow room by putting empty frames in each hive allowing for expansion.

You see, if the bees get to thinking things are too cramped, they’ll swarm looking for more space. And that’s something no beekeeper wants since there’s been lots of time & effort into managing their apiary. We did our splits by swapping empty frames for full ones. It was easy!

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by Texas Homesteader ~ 

Y’all know we bought our very first bees a few years ago. It’s been a blast raising these girls.

But there’s typically no honey harvest that first year as they’re getting established. The honey they make during that first year needs to remain with the hive to see them through the winter. We overwintered our bees and they came through this spring with flying colors!

So we split the hives about 8 weeks ago.  Bibbidy-bobbedy-boo our 2 hives turned into 4!

After the split we allowed the hives to recover a bit before we inspected them again. The hives without a queen raised a new queen to take her place, the hives that retained their queen kept on with business as usual.

Our inspection today showed that now we’re ready to add a honey super to the two stronger hives.

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by Texas Homesteader ~

RancherMan came in from the pastures & told me it was time to suit up, we’ve got a bee swarm to catch. Woo-hoo! 

Apparently he saw a swarm of bees about 15-ft up in a tree right near our pasture gate. We’ve never captured a swarm before so here’s yet one more opportunity to learn something exciting about beekeeping! And maybe get to add a new hive of bees to our group as well.

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by Texas Homesteader ~ 

When RancherMan & I first started beekeeping, we found a local beekeeper who sold established hives. Her hives were sold complete with a deep hive box containing frames of honey, brood, bees and a queen.

It’s recommended that you have a minimum of 2 hives so we bought two and started our new beekeeping endeavor.

There are many ways you can obtain your first set of bees. You can buy a Nuc which is a queen with a small amount of bees. Or you can buy a package of bees to put into a full hive box. Or, like us, you can buy established hives.

But sooner or later there comes a time when you’ll need to perform a split. That’s when you split one hive into two. There are several ways to do that, today I’m talking about a walk-away split,

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