Splitting hives

Happy Chooks

Loving the herd life
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On my last bee inspection, my hive is bursting at the seams. If they are this crowded come spring, I will have to do my first split.

I've been watching videos, but there seems to be a wide variety of methods for splitting. What works best for you? When is the best time to do the split? Does it work best with purchasing a queen, or letting the hive raise their own through supercedure cells?
 

Buzz'n Billy

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Splitting hives sounds daunting, but if you trust yourself and your bees it's easy and an ESSENTIAL management tool that EVERY beekeeper should get comfortable with. Only thing I would caution on doing a split now, even if hive is "booming" is drone availability and overnight temps. Days are getting shorter and most brood nests are decreasing in size. Making a split into cool weather could result in chilled brood. A purchased queen for the new split is probably the best way to go since drone availability is probably thin.

But with all that being said, the easiest way to split a hive without a second queen available is to do a walk-away split. I do my walk-away splits as a mite control technique in our mid-summer dearth. When you split any hive, make sure there are EGGS in both sides of the split regardless of queen location. Eggs are the insurance policy in case you squash your queen during the split or, in the case of walk-away, the means for the hive to produce a new queen. Make sure there's eggs, capped brood and some honey and most splits should be good to go. Shaking lots of bees into the new split and feeding both sides of the split is also a must in my opinion so it's best for most backyard keepers to do splits while there's an active flow on. Good luck!
 

bloonskiller911

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I have been looking at this too. I have a great hive at home and would rather propagate them with splitting them and having them make a new queen in stead of them swarming and possibly loosing the old queen. they are a gentle hive with good honey production. hope you get so actual answers!!
 

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