From the founders
We ran our first-ever live Q&A yesterday, and it was everything we hoped these would be: real beekeepers, real questions, and Dr. Jason Graham working through them one by one. We're doing these monthly from here on out!
Watch the full recap below.
— The Primal Bee Team
More bees, or more honey?
Two weeks into swarm season, your best colony is packed and restless. You have a choice: split it into more hives, or add a super and go for honey. On our first live Q&A, that fork came up again and again, and Dr. Jason Graham (25 years with bees, from the University of Delaware to the lab at the University of Florida) kept bringing it back to one question: what do you actually want?
"If you want to increase the number of bees, then you want to do a split. If you want to increase your honey production, then you want to put a super on."
A split costs you up front. You take an eight-frame colony and start two four-frame colonies, and both have to rebuild before they make surplus honey. But the upside on a Primal Bee hive surprised even Jason. One nest frame holds about the bees and brood of three deep Langstroth frames, so two frames already beat a nuc. On a traditional ten-frame box, a split usually means two colonies, maximum. Here?
"Being able to get up to four colonies from each split is pretty amazing."
He walked through the rest of it too: how to find the queen on a seven-frame nest (longer abdomen, shorter wings, usually on the middle three or four frames), why the best queen excluder is a shoulder of honey rather than a metal grid, the trade-offs between a walk-away split, a mated queen, and a queen cell, and the 4:1 sugar syrup he feeds a fresh split. Plus the fix nobody wants to need: if a split fails, borrow a frame of brood from your stronger colony and give the weak one a few thousand workers.
One more thing worth knowing: he splits at 60°F as a comfortable average, and says you can push it to 50°F if you need to.
We pulled the whole session into one piece, organized by the questions you actually asked.
🐝 US colony losses fell back to normal after two record-breaking years of die-offs. We'll take the win.
👶 A scientist's two-year-old asked why the queen's cell isn't a hexagon, and accidentally kicked off a new discovery about how queens get made.
🚚 An 18-wheeler hauling 408 hives tipped over and set millions of bees loose in a Texas neighborhood. Police told everyone to stay inside.
🔬 A swarm moved in at a nuclear weapons lab, so the ecology team suited up for "Operation Bee Rescue." Best thing they've declassified all year.
🌿 It's Pollinator Week through June 28. This year's theme is caterpillars, which we'll allow.
We're highlighting the photos beekeepers in our community have been sending in from around the world this year.
Got a hive of your own? We want to see it! Drop a photo in the Primal Bee Facebook group or tag us. We're collecting them for a global gallery 🐝
Until next time
That's a wrap on our first live. If a split is on your list this spring, the window is open now, so pick your goal (more bees or more honey), get your gear staged, and go for it.
Next month we're onto something new: pests. Same format, another hour of your questions answered live. Got one you want covered? Reply to this email or drop it in the Facebook community, and we'll work it into the session.
Until then, happy beekeeping.
The Primal Bee Team 🐝