Splits

[jclark96]

I split my hive on Monday, one box with the queen and 4-5 drawn frames with honey and pollen, and the other with lots of eggs larvae and brood. Based on the information in ABC-XYZ and a link from MB I am going to check for queen cells in ten days. Then I am going to split the ten frames left into two five frame nucs and let them build up again. Is there any specific criteria for selecting queen cells-- biggest? Thanks.

[Michael Bush]

I let the bees chose the queen... I wouldn't split them down that small.  A larger split will take off much quicker than a smaller split.  A smaller split is just too poor to quickly get a good start.  A medium sized (one deep box or equivelant) has enough resources to get going quickly.  If I'm trying to make increase I try to have at least the equivelant to one deep box full of bees brood and honey.  If I'm doing queen mating nucs, I try to get one frame of brood and one frame of stores... but the criteria is different. I'm trying to get a queen from the least resources...

[jclark96]

Thanks Micheal, I have learned alot from your website. So I will probably let them build up and split again next spring.