u/Fantastic_Oven9243

I filmed a shorter video this week showing how I use checkerboarding as a bit of swarm management when a colony is getting very full.

This hive was absolutely packed... bees building up into the roof, very little spare room, and queen cups starting to appear. So rather than just adding space above and hoping for the best, I went through the brood boxes and tried to break up that “we’re running out of room” pressure.

The basic idea was to alternate fuller frames with emptier/drawn frames so the bees have space to work, rather than leaving the brood nest feeling congested.

A few things I was checking while doing it:

- whether they had eggs and brood

- how much space they actually had

- whether queen cups had eggs in

- how packed the brood boxes were

- whether checkerboarding was enough, or whether they were further along towards swarming

Short video here if anyone wants to see the actual frame layout and thought process

Curious how others use checkerboarding, do you find it works well for swarm management, or do you prefer going straight to splits once they’re this full?

Checked some spring splits this week and thought I’d share the shorter version of the inspection in case it’s useful to anyone doing the same at the moment.

I was going through last week’s splits and choosing which queen cell to leave in each colony.

What I was mainly looking for:

- a decent, well-shaped queen cell

- good placement

- enough bees around the brood

- avoiding small or scrappy emergency cells

- making sure I wasn’t leaving too many and risking castes

I usually prefer to leave one strong queen cell rather than several, but I know there are different approaches and it can depend on the colony.

There was one unusual surprise during the inspection as well, which I wasn’t expecting to see.

How are everyone else’s spring splits looking so far this year? Are you already seeing good queen cells, or are things still a bit behind where you are?

Did a short video on one of my spring splits this week and thought I’d share the general approach here in case it’s useful to anyone newer to splitting colonies.

This one was a strong hive on double brood, getting close to the point where I’d rather split it than let it keep building towards swarm mode.

Main things I was trying to balance before splitting were:

- brood

- food

- pollen

- enough bees left in the split

One thing I mentioned in the video that’s worth stressing is that if the split is staying in the same apiary, the flying bees will drift back to the original hive. Because of that, I try to shake in extra nurse bees so the split doesn’t end up too weak.

I also ended up finding the queen, which obviously makes life easier, but I still treat this as basically a walk-away split. If you don’t find her, it’s not the end of the world — after a few days, one box will still have eggs and the other will be building queen cells.

I kept the original colony with the queen in its original spot, gave it more space, and left the split with enough brood, food and pollen to raise a new queen.

Interested to hear how others prefer to do their spring splits, especially when keeping both colonies in the same apiary.