Splitting A Hive

[Romahawk]

I have seen on these forums and others about making two hives from one in the spring.

Some say to set the top half onto a new bottom and add empty hive bodies to the top of each box. Others I see say to set two empty hive bodies on bottom boards and place the old hive bodies on top of them.

Some say to wait a few days and then look for eggs in the old hive bodies and put a new queen in the one with out eggs. Others say just split them and leave them alone to raise their own queen.

Some say to just go out to the bee yard and split the boxes. Others say to reverse the boxes in the spring and wait several days before splitting to make sure there are eggs of the right age and then split the boxes.

Looking for suggestions as to what is the best way to do this. I'm a tad confused reading all the different ways people have of making an increase in the number of hives they have.

[Michael Bush]

The concepts of splits are:

You have to make sure that both of the resulting colonies have a queen or the resources to make one (eggs or larvae that just hatched from the egg, drones flying, pollen and honey, plenty of nurse bees).

You have to make sure that both of the resulting colonies get an adequate supply of honey and pollen to feed the brood and themselves.

You have to make sure that you account for drift back to the original site and insure that both resulting colonies have enough population of bees to care for the brood and the hive they have.

The old adage is that you can try to raise more bees or more honey.  If you want both, then you can try to maximize honey in the old location and bees in the new split.  Otherwise most splits are either a small nuc made up from just enough to get it started, or an even split.

An even split. You take half of everything and divide it up. Face both of new hives at the sides of the old hive so the returning bees aren't sure which one to come back to. In a week or so, swap places to equalize the drift to the one with the queen.

A walk away split. You take a frame of eggs, two frames of emerging brood and two frames of pollen and honey and put them in a 5 frame nuc, shake in some extra nurse bees (making sure you don’t get the queen), put the lid on and walk away. Come back in four weeks and see if the queen is laying.

A typical split. Same as above, but you either introduce a queen you bought or you come back in four days and destroy any queen cells that are capped. These were started from larvae that are too old. Now walk away and let them raise their new queen. If you introduce a queen they will be four weeks ahead of the hive that is raising their own, so you will have to put them in a larger box than a nuc to start with.

A cut down split. This is very timing critical. It should be done shortly before the main honey flow. The purpose is to maximize the foraging population while minimizing swarming and crowding the bees into the supers.. There are variations on this, but basically the idea is to put almost all the open brood, honey and pollen and the queen in a new hive while leaving all the capped brood, some of the honey and a frame of eggs with the old hive with less brood boxes and more supers. The new hive won't swarm because it doesn't have a workforce (which all returns to the old hive). The old hive won't swarm because it doesn't have a queen or any open brood. It will take at least six weeks or more for them to raise a queen and get a decent brood nest going. Meantime, you still get a lot of production (probably a lot MORE production) from the old hive because they are not busy caring for brood. You get the old hive requeened and you get a split. Another variation is to leave the queen with the old hive and take ALL the open brood out. They won't swarm right away because the open brood is gone.

[Romahawk]

Thank you for that detailed response Michael, I have a bit of reading to do before spring I think. I only have one hive and want to have about five to play with next year. I have a three places that people will let me set up a bait hive for next years swarms. One person has a big old Maple in his yard that he claims has had monster swarms for the last three years. The other two people have a bunch of bees in out building walls that produced what they say are large swarms this year. The one claims the bees have been in the wall of an old tool shed for ten years but I suspect that the hive has died out and been replaced by other bees several times in that amount of years. Looking forward to spring to see just what kind of swarms do come out and if I'm going to be lucky enough to snag at least one or two of them.

[bassman1977]

A typical split. Same as above, but you either introduce a queen you bought or you come back in four days and destroy any queen cells that are capped. These were started from larvae that are too old. Now walk away and let them raise their new queen. If you introduce a queen they will be four weeks ahead of the hive that is raising their own, so you will have to put them in a larger box than a nuc to start with.

When doing this type of splilt, is there are waiting period before introducing a queen?  I seem to remember someone saying they should be queenless for 3 or 4 days.

[Finsky]

My consept is

1) I want honey. If you plit hive, you cannot get honey for long time.
3) It is easy to make nucs later in summet so much I need.
2) Raise hive at spring and ket it grow to 5-7 box hive  before you  make a nuc.
3) When main yield is over, you may take a whole box and make new colony or you give brood to that nuc you made before.


In this pic I have put 2 weak hives together for purpose to get honey.
http://bees.freesuperhost.com/yabbfiles/Attachments/Kuva_049.jpg

In this  pic they are one good queen hives.
http://bees.freesuperhost.com/yabbfiles/Attachments/valmis3.jpg