Natural hive duplication
Natural hive duplication is a nice way of slowly getting native bees to move into a box. While this method has been around for a long time (probably originating in brazil), it is not commonly used. I thought I would give this a go and share how I did it.
I have a very old log that was from the base of a large tree. When the tree fell down it landed with the base facing upwards. The bees turned their nest upside down and made a new entrance up the top. I decided to do a natural hive duplication from this log and the first step was to build a box. I had some nice timber laying around so I decided to use this. I made a full height box and then cut the entire box in half to create a box that could be split. I used form ply as the base.
Because the native bee entrance was about middle of the log I decided that connecting the box through the base would work fine. Before I did this I used a piece of 16mm black plastic water pipe to poke into their entrance hole. After that I used some native bees wax to seal around the pipe to hold it in place. I then drilled an appropriate size hole in the base of the box and sat the box on top of the log (there’s a ledge that is unclear in the photo’s). I put more wax around the pipe inside the box. It’s a bad picture but you can see the bees circling this new door. It is important to get the bees to walk through your new box to leave and return only by your box.
I then left this box with no lid for a couple of day till I could see they were using this new entrance. In reality I should have covered the log under the box with a towel. With natural hive duplication you need to hide the old entrance very well because the bees will naturally want to return to it.
With the box in place the natural hive duplication process is almost ready. My old pal Dean came to visit and showed me an awesome trick for helping the bees take to the new box. I watched as he made small wax cones between his finger tips and pressed them to the base and the sides of the box all over the place. I took a photo of this at night about 3 days later.
With the lid in place its time to leave the box and wait a long time as they make their new home feel like home.
Read more about this here
or visit my updated tutorial for better results Hive duplication 2
or Wild things and their videos
part 1 here
Part 2 here
part 3 here
A special thanks to Tom Carter and John Klummp for paving the way with natural hive duplication also known as. eduction.
Is there a way of sharing photos on here? I’m trying a duplication with a hive at work and so far its doing exceptionally well. I did the same with the irrigation piping from the original (mother) hive and within the day they were active within the new box. I to had used some native bee wax and placed it around the new entrance but the first thing they did was remove it to use elsewhere. As you mention I also ended up covering the old entrance as they did tend to cluster around the now blocked off entrance.
At first I only had whatever was in my truck at the time and used some blue-tac to hold the pipe in place but they made light work of this and were using the original entrance by the next day before I had time to get back to seal it correctly. Now a few weeks in they’ve created a nice entrance tunnel at both the new entrance and the entrance to the original hive.
As far there’s no sign of any brood construction, but there are stores or more like piles of pollen building up in the corners. I see you have some wax starter cell with brood on, do you think this would promote construction? I don’t want to take any brood from my hive at home as I’m a little worried its still not up to strength and the colder weathers about start.
I believe you can host your picture on flicker or similar and provide a link.
If I were you I would continue to let your bees walk through the new hive and don’t add anything till spring time when it warms up. While natural hive duplication will get you a new hive eventually it can take time for the bees to move brood into it. (Up to 15months) some things that help this to take course is to reduce the size of their current living space. Cutting their log to the absolute minimum makes the box seem like an attractive place to store supplies and eventually brood. If you add brood cells to the box this is a very fast way to get the bees to start building. The special scent brood carries is a motivator like moths to a flame. Not much brood is needed to trigger this behavior. Care in monitoring the hive is key to a success in a duplication. Once a new queen hatches in the box you will notice a very excited behavior with bees moving much faster. It is at this time the connection with the mother hive can be broken. If the hive is left connected eventually the queen inside the log will order the removal of the hive queen and this means the remains of the brood will be hatched and removed.
I hope this helps.
Kind regards
Nick
I’m doing a hive duplication in the middle of winter as we type. I am adding a very tiny amount of brood to the new hive tomorrow actually, only about a tablespoon is all you need. So Jaime, you can take that from even a weal hive with no damage. A queen will replace that easy in under a week in a weak hive, a day or two in a strong hive. As Nick states, your after the smell, not numbers of brood, to trigger occupation.
I pity you poor buggers down south who cant propagate hives in the winter. I plan to have my hive duplication done in a month and removed. A couple of tricks to this, BUT a one way bee valve really helps. Once I get good numbers of bees in the box, with a queen, well it can be removed. If you cant monitor the new hive for the hatching or acquired queen, consider that for a bee, its 50 days from egg to adult. If you add a queen cell, removing the hive in a month is a safe bet.
Graham L Sanders
Thanks for the advise guys. Nick – unfortunately reducing the size of the original hive isn’t an option at the moment as its in a tree, but in a few months this area will be removed over the space of a few days so I’m more likely to just remove the mother hive as a whole. So If I can get them to duplicate in the meantime fantastic. This may obviously not be enough time.
So Graham – as you suggested I took a small amount of brood from my existing hive under the cloak of darkness last night and came in this morning still in darkness and added it to the new box. All going well in a few months when we start clearing this next area of woods I’ll have 3 hives if I don’t find any more along the way.
Cheers
Jaime
Well just to update you 2 weeks down the line – As mentioned in the last post I added a small amount of brood(about a table spoon/150-200 cells) and went and checked back on the 2 hives this weekend. So the original hive from which I took the section of brood despite me thinking it was very inactive from the outside is very active on the inside. 2 weeks later and you can barely see that I cut a section of brood out. Coming into work to look in with the hive I’m trying to duplicate I see they’ve also been very busy and have created a nice new section off of their entrance tunnel BUT the section of brood I placed in with them is all but gone with only about 30 cells remaining. You can see them hard are work on it but it looks more like they’re removing it and taking it back to the mother hive. The small section that does remain they seem have fixed down so maybe they’ll keep that section I’ll check back on the in anther few weeks.
Jaime