Two out of four of our hives successfully overwintered. Yay! For me, along with the joy of knowing they’ve survived another season (with little doing on my part) comes a real sense of responsibility. It’s a moment where I choose to recommit to a set of beliefs and values and then act in accordance with them. If I want to continue keeping bees the way I want to keep bees, it requires making splits. With a loss rate of 50-66% every winter, I have to go into winter with multiple hives and play the odds, and then breed from any bees that survive. My favorite splits-making / queen rearing / swarm-prevention method is a modified CC Miller technique that I learned from my mentor Suzanne. During the flow when resources are plentiful, I choose a hive that’s doing well (has plenty of brood, including multiple frames with eggs in the cells, ideally before they have the mind to swarm), has the traits I want, and I find the queen. I set the frame with the queen safely aside. I replace the frame I removed with another frame and move the entire rest of that hive to a different location. In the original hive’s location I set up a new hive with the same number of boxes full of drawn comb, and include the frame with the queen. She gets plenty of room to lay eggs and the entire field force to support her. The hive in the new location has nurse bees galore and the resources to make a bunch of queen cells. In a week to 10 days I’ll check for and pull any queen cells to raise up in a queen castle, leaving one to be born and mate and lead the new hive. Timing is so key to this! I find it gives me a great reason to tune in to the natural rhythms of the bees and the season. (at Monroe, Virginia)








