Keep from depleting one source hive. Or control swarming of parent hives by taking bees, a couple of frames from it and add frames from other hives to get a full box. Or want to increase number of hives and don't want to do even splits because you want to keep numbers up for honey crop.
Exactly what I was thinking about. I want to propagate the feral queens I have. I realize their genetics will probably be more mixed in their daughters, but I want to try. I do not want to cut down the hives strength more than necessary to control swarming, while gaining/keeping the genetics of the local bees. So I hope to use swarm cells/frames from those feral hives, and frames from my Italian's/Carny's without cutting the numbers down so far that they wont produce honey.
IF.... that works, and I will find out if it does, I can gain four or five hives without losing too much strength in the existing colonies, add to those with captured swarms from the eight feral hives I now know of, and I will be well on my way to the 40 - 50 hives I eventually intend on having within the next five years, and I wont have to buy outside queens to do it.
I will admit, that I am considering re queening with Russians or other resistant (northern) bees on a few hives to add their drones to the fly zones...
Heh, yeah, big plans for one little country boy, but it will sure be fun trying!