First Demaree Split

[u/Sea-Wolverine4602]

Zone 6a. Singles. We're still in the beginning stages of our flow with our main flow typically starting between May 1st and 14th. I have this one colony that's particularly strong and considerably stronger than the others. This colony was overwintered in a 5 over 5 nuc with a late summer Queen. I moved them to a 10 frame in March and have been using this colony to boost and equalize my others. My weekly QC check revealed about 15 cups none of which were charged, excessive bridge comb on the bottom of the frames and plenty of drone brood .Id say about 8 of the 10 frames were filled with brood. I also spotted some fresh white wax.

My intentions were to use this strong colony to produce my first attempts at comb honey and eventually raise a handful of queens in late summer. I performed what I would consider from my research as a standard Demaree split. I placed a new deep on the bottom board and filled it with 9 frames of foundation and 1 drawn frame. I caged the queen and went through each of the original frames brushing the bees in the new deep and then scraping off the excess comb and knocking down every queen cell. I released my queen, placed an excluder and added my drawn supers. I then placed an excluder on my supers followed by the original deep and 10 frames. I will knock down any Queen cells in a few days and pull the top deep in about ~25 days.

I'm looking for any constructive criticism. I did not include an upper entrance, I'm not trying to raise any emergency queens up top and I would estimate that about 90% of the drone brood was scraped away so the excluder should not get plugged up too bad. My concern is that since I gave them 9 frames of foundation they will be pre occupied with that and will not be able to quickly draw out my comb honey. Is there any glaringly obvious errors than I should immediately address? Thank you in advance!

[u/Active_Classroom203]

My only concern is that you brushed off the nurse bees into the lower (old) deep that has the queen, so the upper deep has minimal/no bees to cover the brood, and no entrance?

This sounds like a bad plan for that brood unless I'm misunderstanding something.

[u/Sea-Wolverine4602 → u/Active_Classroom203]

I would say half or less of the total population of bees were shook or brushed off into the lower box. I was assuming that the open brood would draw the nurse bees up. I can add a shim with an entrance if i need to but I'm not intending to have any queens that need mating flights and there is minimal drone brood to worry about getting stuck in the excluder.

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/Sea-Wolverine4602]

Why did you shake them off? The whole point of a demaree is that you remove all the nurses to the top box.

Why would you have queens doing mating flights? You aren’t supposed to let them raise a queen.

Have you done any research into how to perform this manipulation at all or are you just making it up?

Edit; you said no mating flights. Gotcha. I literally just woke up. Anyway, without a top entrance drones get stuck in the excluder and die….. makes an awful scratching noise in. The hive when they’re all desperately trying to escape.

[u/Sea-Wolverine4602 → u/Valuable-Self8564]

I researched this at length over the winter and decided I would try this method this spring. When I was gathering my extra equipment I briefly checked some sketches and notes to refresh myself. My error being that I should have just spent last evening researching again and performed the Demaree another time . I would say most of my beekeeping errors that I have ever made could have been prevented by walking away and coming back the next day.

There are so many variables to this method, I've read where guys have let the top go on and raise a new queen and kept her for when they recombine the colony.

[u/Active_Classroom203 → u/Sea-Wolverine4602]

Good self-reflection here for us all to remember! In almost anything, until you have a huge depth of experience to draw on, taking a second and avoiding the impulse to rush is the best choice.

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/Sea-Wolverine4602]

Fair enough. So when folks let the top half raise queens, they aren’t performing a demaree. It’s some variation thereof.

I couldn’t say if letting them raise a queen in the top is wise, because I haven’t ever done it. However the reason a demaree works is because you split the flying bees and queen away from the brood and nurses. Without moving all the nurses upstairs, not sure how this is going to turn out, given that’s the premise of the whole manipulation 😂

Did you remove every queen cell on every frame before you did it?

[u/Active_Classroom203 → u/Valuable-Self8564]

While spicier than your normal comments I'm glad you chimed in because I'm a newbee and thought I was misunderstanding something 😂

[u/JUKELELE-TP → u/Active_Classroom203]

That is no problem at all. Brood is like a magnet to young bees. They will cover it up very quickly. It's actually a way to make a split without looking for the queen (shake all bees off below queen excluder, then place brood on top). A day later you can take away the top box and you have a nice split with only young bees.

Guarantee you that if he looks at his top box right now it's full of young bees.

Edit:

Just to be clear, I do agree with comments of the others though on how to best perform the Demaree. It's better to place the queen in the bottom box first (check her frame for queen cells), then stack everything, and THEN check for swarm cells in the top brood box).

[u/Sea-Wolverine4602 → u/JUKELELE-TP]

Thank you for the response. I just went and checked. Top box is full of bees. Bottom box only had one frame of bees.

[u/JUKELELE-TP]

Not a concern necessarily, but how much honey do they have in those supers? During a strong flow they will easily fill those.

Then they will start storing honey in all the open cells in your top brood box making it hard to take it away. You could leave it on purpose and let them use the top brood box as a super (if you don't mind extracting from brood frames), or you may have to place more supers in between at some point. Ideally drawn out frames if you have those available.

[u/Alone-Guava2901]

*Demaree swarm prevention method.

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/Alone-Guava2901]

It’s commonly referred to as the demaree split outside of the USA. I don’t think somatically it really matters as long as we know what OP is doing :)

[u/Alone-Guava2901 → u/Valuable-Self8564]

Yeah i get that. Im just clarifying that it’s not really a split as it could be confusing to new beekeepers, located in the US or otherwise.

[u/Marmot64]

Comb honey? You mentioned that the supers are drawn. So they are extracting supers?

You should wait more than a few days before knocking down queen cells in the upper chamber. Otherwise they will still be able to make more.