We used 5-frame trap boxes to trap wild trekking honeybee colonies this season and then let them fill them so we could use the same colonies to split again. At one apiary site in Midrand, we trapped 7 wild honeybee colonies by providing them viable 5-frame boxes to move into.
After about 5 weeks they had completely outgrown their home and filled all 5 frames with brood comb. One box even started building bhurr comb on the side and entrance.
We used out chosen method of honeybee splitting and created another 5 new bee colonies from the 7 we have captured. We had almost doubled our apiary size in just 3 weeks! This process should be started as early as July in the Southern Hemisphere to take advantage of natural nectar flows with the major focus on the Aloes in July and then the Spring nectar flow in September.
This is the best time to create honeybee colonies by splitting. However, there is still opportunity to be successful during the remainder of the summer however you must ensure suitable supply of food and bees are provided to the new honeybee colony otherwise they will not suvive easily.
We have now reached 34 colonies in total combining the apiaries in Gauteng with those of the apiary in Mpumalanga. By planning to split again in July of 2011 we should generate at least double the colonies we have within 4 weeks of starting the process. If we graft the extra queen cells that get produced and plant them in separate trap boxes these will push our splitting numbers to 3 times our starting total.
In this way, we aim to go from 30 colonies (we assume a 10% loss over the wintering period - 4 in this case) to a minimum of 60 colonies but quite easily should reach 90 if we graft extra queen cells into empty trap boxes. This is not including our trapping of new wild colonies either.
By just utilising our existing bee stock we should push our numbers to a potential of 90 honeybee colonies by end September 2011. By trapping new wild colonies we should add additional new honey bee swarms of 1/3 of the trap boxes we place out in the field.
In 2010, we placed roughly 50 empty boxes in the field. We captured around 15 wild bee colonies in this season.
We will also be looking at queen rearing in addition to splitting established colonies. We will use 5 strong established colonies for this purpose. They will be fed sugar water 2 weeks prior to the exercise. We will prepare small queen bee rearing boxes to cope with the large quantity of bees we will need to support our new queen cells.
We will keep detailed records and accounts of the progress and procedure. If you want honey bee pollination or want to start a honey farming project contact us for more info.
