The Brazilian apiculture relies upon collecting wild swarms of Africanized honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) to replace and/or increase the number of colonies in the apiaries. This practice brings problems such as dependence on nature to capture any swarm, diverse genetic make-up of the colonies captured and the possibility of these swarms be carrying diseases and parasites harmful to the bees. The present work tests and presents a technique to split colonies of Africanized honey bees to produce new strong colonies in short time, departing from little resources of wax, brood and food stores. Results showed that A. mellifera nuclei formed by a young and mated queen, 1kg of workers, a frame of sealed brood, an empty frame of drawn beeswax and two frames containing an embossed sheet of beeswax each, allows producing new colonies within 42 days. Therefore, it is concluded that the technique to split colonies in nuclei as described above gives beekeepers a viable alternative to produce and commercialize new colonies of Africanized honey bees in large scale.
colony splitting; space for laying eggs; minimal resources; nuclei formation
