The division of bee colonies (industrial division)

Dividing bee colonies, or artificial swarming, is one of the most important practices beekeepers use to increase the number of their bee colonies. This allows them to expand their hives by approximately 20% annually.

What to Do Before Dividing Bee Colonies

The first and most important step is maintaining the strength of the bee colonies throughout the year. This ensures they remain safe from diseases, predator attacks, and robber bees. Only strong colonies are suitable for division since weak ones cannot quickly recover from the loss of worker bees and stored food. For instance, if a beekeeper moves their apiary to a location with abundant forage, they should combine weak colonies to create strong or at least moderately strong ones. Strong colonies gather significantly more food than they consume compared to weaker colonies, which require more resources than they collect due to the low number of active bees.

Conditions for Dividing Bee Colonies

Division should only be carried out on strong colonies crowded with bees, brood, and stored food. This process is best conducted early in the spring (from mid-February to April) to give the newly formed colonies ample time to strengthen, grow, and prepare for winter as robust hives.

Benefits of Dividing Bee Colonies

1. Increase the number of bee colonies naturally without purchasing new ones.
2. Replace colonies lost during winter and rejuvenate hives with aging or deceased queens.
3. Serve as a method of preventing natural swarming, which occurs due to overcrowding with bees and brood.
4. Provide beekeepers with an additional income by selling surplus nucleus colonies. Some producers may even establish apiaries specifically for the commercial sale of bees resulting from division practices.

Actions to Take Before Performing Bee Colony Division Operations

1. Activate the strong colonies that will be divided in the spring by feeding them a diluted sugar solution so that the queen becomes active and lays eggs early.
2. Prepare wax combs, both filled and empty, to be added to the new colonies so they do not exert energy in producing and stretching the wax.
3. Raise queens from excellent strains to directly introduce them into the divided colonies so that time is not wasted in raising new queens. If the mated queens are not available, then an increase in virgin queens prepared for introduction should be done. If mated or virgin queens are unavailable and the beekeeper does not wish to depend on others to purchase queens, then mature queen cells should be used, provided they are from excellent strains and are large, located at the edges of the comb to offer better opportunities and improve the quality of the resulting queen.

Learn about (Methods of Producing Queens Naturally and Artificially   and  Methods of Introducing a Queen into a Bee Colony)

Methods of Bee Colony Division

Creating a New Colony from a Strong Colony

This method is done by following these steps:

1. Prepare an empty hive next to the strong colony from which a few frames of bees are taken from both sides, ensuring that among these frames are two sealed brood frames, one with eggs and newly hatched larvae, and two frames with honey and pollen. These frames are placed in the empty hive.    See Arranging Wax Combs in a Beehive to Enhance the Productivity of Bee Colonies
2. Replace the original colony with empty frames instead of the ones taken, seal its entrance with green grass, and move it to a location far from its original spot.
3. Place the new colony where the original colony was before it was moved.
4. Provide the new colony with a mated or virgin queen.
5. The foraging bees will return to their original location and enter the new colony, strengthening it.
6. Once the grass dries, the original colony's bees will remove it, adapt to the new location, and the colony will begin compensating for the bees, brood, and food it lost.

Important Note: Do not seal the entrance of the original colony with grass before confirming that the food left inside the colony is enough to sustain it, to prevent the colony from starving while sealed off with grass.

Creating a New Colony from Two Colonies

       This method is used to avoid excessive division that can occur when dividing a single colony into two. The damage is spread across two colonies; from one, only the bees are taken, and from the other, brood and honeycombs.

For simplicity, we will refer to the divided colonies as A and B, and the new colony as C.

1. Prepare an empty hive (C) and place it next to hive (A).
2. From colony (B), take brood frames with food but without bees and place them in hive (C).
3. Replace the frames in colony (B) with drawn combs.
4. From hive (A), take 2-3 frames covered with bees and shake the bees onto the frames in hive (C), which is supplied with a new queen.
5. Seal the entrance of hive (A) with green grass and move it to a distant location in the apiary or further.
6. Place colony (C) in place of colony (A).
7. The foraging bees from colony (A) will return and find colony (C) in its place. They will enter it, strengthening it. When the grass blocking the entrance of hive (A) dries, the bees will chew it and leave to get used to their new location.

Learn more about (Methods of Natural and Artificial Queen Production   and  Methods of Introducing a Queen Bee into a Colony)

Creating a New Colony from Several Colonies

           This method is considered one of the least harmful methods of colony division and can be used to produce a considerable number of new colonies from several colonies, provided that the colonies being divided are strong, with more than 15 frames per hive.

      The steps in this method are similar to the previous one in technique, but the brood and food frames added to the new colony are taken from several colonies. A frame with sealed brood is taken from one colony, another frame with sealed brood from another, a frame with small brood from a third, and a frame with honey and pollen from a fourth. As for the bees added to the new colony, they are taken from only one colony, preferably a very strong one, not one of the four colonies from which the frames were taken. From this colony, take 2-3 frames covered with bees, shake them onto the new colony, and provide it with a mated or virgin queen. If a queen is not available, the colony is supplied with a queen cell that is almost ready to hatch, and the cell should be of excellent quality. Then seal the entrance of the hive from which the bees were taken with green grass and move it to a distant place in the apiary or even outside the apiary. When the bees from that colony return and find the new colony in its place, they will enter and strengthen it.

Dividing Bee Colonies to Produce Bee Nuclei

       The nucleus contains 2-4 frames with brood, pollen, and honey, covered with bees on both sides. It has a young, mated queen at the top. This nucleus is placed in a travel cage, ready for sale and shipment at the appropriate time.

Steps for Dividing Bee Colonies to Produce Bee Nuclei

1. Place the travel cage next to the hive to be divided and remove brood and honey along with the bees.
2. Move the original hive to another location in the apiary after placing empty frames in place of those that were removed. Seal its entrance with grass.
3. A new queen is introduced into the travel cage, or a new queen is raised within it.
4. Seal the nucleus and secure its covers the evening before shipping to the customer.