Update - Hive split into 3 w/pic

[tlynn]

Whew, hive split finally.  I had one hive with 3 brood boxes and turned it into 3 hives.  I read somewhere that you can put a branch in front of the hive to make them take notice the next morning and reorient, so I cut some mango branches and put on top.  I have no idea if this will do anything - the bees were pretty well perplexed after my wife and I had them spread out for an hour and a half. 

In the picture

http://technowerkz.com/IMG_1137.JPG

the hive with the green front has my blue ribbon queen, the one that superceded my Purvis queen a while back and grew to three brood boxes in short order.  The hive to the right of the green one is the location of where the original hive was.  Brown box is my first hive from last year and the nuc is one I got last week.  So I am requeening the brown hive and the two varnished ones tomorrow.  Should be perfect time for this, as we have a good flow going and they should build out the new foundation interspersed between the brood.

Anything I'm missing?  Should I reduce the entrances until everything gets stable?

Tracy

[RayMarler]

you might want to reduce the entrances on the splits that have no queens.  Looks good, nice setup you got there!

[Pond Creek Farm]

My goodness, how did you find the queen in three full boxes of bees?  I can find her early in the season, but as the bees increase in number, I can never find her. 

[tlynn]

you might want to reduce the entrances on the splits that have no queens.  Looks good, nice setup you got there!

OK, I'll cinch them down.  Thanks!

[tlynn]

My goodness, how did you find the queen in three full boxes of bees?  I can find her early in the season, but as the bees increase in number, I can never find her. 

It wasn't easy, for sure. I inspected last weekend and found her in the second box so I put queen excluders around that box, so it was a little easier today.  Whoever made that suggestion on another post I thank you!  She is really runny and I only found her on the second go around, just about when I was going to give up.  I saw her on a frame, then looked away for a second, lost her, and then proceeded to look over the frame for what seemed like 5 minutes before I found her running along a little trough where they did not connect the foundation with the bottom of the frame.  I was sure she dropped back into the box.   Today I went through the box twice before finally finding her again.  Big relief to find her so I could corner her to switch around frames.

[Michael Bush]

Branch or no branch there will be some drift.  But with the branch there will be less.  Still you need to account for that by shaking more bees into the ones at the new location from the one at the old location.