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Making a split

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tycrnp:
I checked my 3 hives today and found my strongest one had queen cells on 2 of the frames.  There were several frames of capped brood and larvae.  I'm not very good at finding the queen.  I saw a video where they shook all of the bees into the brood box, added a queen excluder, then put some some brood frames in a box on top.  Return 24 hours later and remove the top box, add a queen, resulting in a split.

My questions are these: 
1.  Could I put the frames with queen cells in the top box and separate it from the bottom box and expect when a queen hatches I will have a viable split? 
2.  Since I have queen cells on 2 frames, could I potentially put those frames with queen cells in 2 separate boxes with additional frames of brood and honey and have a 3rd hive from the split?

Acebird:
How many cells?  Be careful it is not a supercedure for a failing queen.  If I thought it was a supercedure I would only remove one frame of cells and divide the hive in half.  If I thought it was a swarm in the making I would divide the heck out of it trying to make sure there were either eggs, young larvae or cells in each divide.

tycrnp:
There is 1 capped queen cell on 1 frame, and 4 queen cells (not yet capped) on the other frame.  I don't think this queen is failing.  There are several frames with lots of brood in a beautiful pattern.

So my next questions are:  If I do the split, do I have to take the split far away from the original hive?  I've heard, "2 feet, 2 miles....doesn't matter."  Does it matter?

Acebird:
Strongest hive with 4-5 cells I would not rule out supercedure but either way I do splits.
Now as far as it mattering who did you ask?  I make my splits inches apart.  What matters is how much drift you get.  If each split is over provisioned then what does it matter if you get drift?  There are ways to take care of the imbalance if you want to do it.  I am too lazy.  I use drift to tell me where the queen is because I have never found one inside one of my hives.  The only reason I have for knowing where the queen is because I can split that one again.

tycrnp:
Sounds good, thanks for the help!  And you're not lazy.....just wanna work smarter, not harder!  :wink:

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