Hello again folks
Thank you to all who answered my previous call for advice found a suitable paint for my hive.
I received my bees 3 weeks ago and they are thriving, they arrived in a Nuc Box with feeder. I spoke to the supplier of my bees and asked how i might increase the numbers of my hives saying that the miller method appeared very straight forward ( I want to do this in case I loose some bees due to my inexperience this winter) , the supplier suggested an easier way to increase the number of hives would be to keep the bees in the nuc box and add one or 2 nuc extensions and allow the colony to expand then split the colony into three and provide them with 2 new queens thus creating 3 from 1 .
This sounded fairly straightforward so i pre ordered a couple of queens for the beginning of june, have purchased two maisemore brood extension boxes added one and have been feeding them through the cold period and the bees appear to be adding comb in the new brood box extension and storing some honey in it but no brood combs .
does anyone have any strategies to encourage them to spread into the new area ? I thought of taking a couple of frames one with the queen on and moving it into the new section to encourage her to lay there ,but wasn't sure if this was a good idea.
Any ideas most welcome or should i completely re think my strategy
kind regards
Tony Joyce
Thank you to all who answered my previous call for advice found a suitable paint for my hive.
I received my bees 3 weeks ago and they are thriving, they arrived in a Nuc Box with feeder. I spoke to the supplier of my bees and asked how i might increase the numbers of my hives saying that the miller method appeared very straight forward ( I want to do this in case I loose some bees due to my inexperience this winter) , the supplier suggested an easier way to increase the number of hives would be to keep the bees in the nuc box and add one or 2 nuc extensions and allow the colony to expand then split the colony into three and provide them with 2 new queens thus creating 3 from 1 .
This sounded fairly straightforward so i pre ordered a couple of queens for the beginning of june, have purchased two maisemore brood extension boxes added one and have been feeding them through the cold period and the bees appear to be adding comb in the new brood box extension and storing some honey in it but no brood combs .
does anyone have any strategies to encourage them to spread into the new area ? I thought of taking a couple of frames one with the queen on and moving it into the new section to encourage her to lay there ,but wasn't sure if this was a good idea.
Any ideas most welcome or should i completely re think my strategy
kind regards
Tony Joyce