How to Split a Honeybee Colony in a Layens Horizontal Hive #honeybee #beekeeping #horizontalhive

One important thing I left off of the end of this video: I use a thin piece of plywood, with screened vents, as an inner cover over the open area between the colonies. This keeps the bees from going over the middle divider. An alternate method of keeping the bees from crossing between colonies is to use a full-length partition (no gap at the bottom) on one of the colonies. However it's done, there should be some method of preventing the bees from crossing between colonies inside of the hive.

Just found this one vs the other one where I asked about the in-box split qu. Moving them to the center first makes sense. Guess I'll just have to give this a try. Thanks

Sweet and smooth walk away split my friend, I think I would have only done one thing different, I think I would have added then new frames one on each end of the old frames. But I think small things like that may be more of a personal preference then something that would bother the bees. lol Great work and I will be waiting to see the results. Thank you for sharing your journey it is helping me with mine, and each new video you do, your helping many people now and in the future. :))))

I just subscribed. I’m looking to leave doing Langstroth because the boxes are getting too heavy for this old body. I’m looking forward to your videos and seeing how you manage the colonies.

Awesome .... Can you do a video (close up ) of how to pick up a queen the best way .... LOVE those videos...

Do you always put new foundation at the center of the hive or do you ever use drawn comb? Great video. So little about management of a horizontal hive in a practical sense. enjoy the videos a lot.

Very good videos. Well laid out and well presented. I put out my first bait hive yesterday so will see what happens. I what part of Missouri do you live? I am in South Central in Howell county.

How nice not having to remove honey supers and brood boxes to do inspections and splits. Can you tell me how warm the nights need to be before making splits, thanks for the great videos

Great frames of brood. I've currently only got my first colony that got through Winter great and considering a split. Doing my first inspection at the weekend. Now do I split or leave my first colony to grow and gain experience through a whole season first? Dilemma!

I'm curious, did you keep the two colonies in there all season or did you eventually move them to separate hives? How did that go?

Would you do this again? I'm new to your channel and love it! My bees came through the winter great this year and I only have one layens hive right now, a 20 frame. I'd love to try out this method this year so they don't swarm. I'm in Alberta, we're having a slow to warm up spring but I saw the very first(and very sparse) pollen coming in yesterday. Getting ready for the big burst...I saw that the queen is backfilling the empty brood cells already! I've been feeding wheat germ/brewers yeast outside the hives and pollen patties inside the hives...Sugar syrup is available too. My hives survived but were totally empty this spring, except for the layens hive...it has lots of honey.

I have a question. How come the bees from the colony that doesn't have a queen, don't move to the colony that has the queen?

I need to split this coming Saturday. Is it too late to move frame s to center as you did in previous video with just short a week before split? At what point do you move split to another hive? I have a layens I can move split to now , when I make the split.

What requirements would you say are necessary to make a split? How many frames of brood/nectar?

Is there a follow up to this video?

I run layens hives as well. I plan on splitting this way. My question is what keeps the bees from going over the top of the center divider board to the other side?

Good video… why did you decide to split? I was expecting to see more frames of brood before splitting that one.

I am a little confused- I guess I thought brood and eggs were synonymous. When you say eggs, are those brood that haven't been capped yet? Thanks!!

Question. Colony just swarmed a few days ago. Left behind are 14 frames loaded with plenty of bees, brood, honey, and about 10 queen cells. Could I split these 14 frames w/divider board and put half of the queen cell frames on either end to get two colonies going? What would happen? I'm one year into beekeeping, in novice mode. Thanks for this video!

I left a gap under the divider board and the bees would come out and explore by the hundreds. Then it became a real pain to even get the lid closed