I am splitting 1 hive into 3 today and the new hives will be next to the donor. Is there a way to keep all the field bees from drifting back to the original hive?
I might be inclined to put the split with the old queen in the farthest position and the weaker of the two remaining splits(if you're not able to get them perfectly even) in the old location. If it looks really lopsided after a few days you could always swap hive locations to even it back out.
I just put the splits where I want them and let time sort it out and if they seem to be a little low on bees later I grab a frame of soon to emerge brood with house bees still attached and put them in. I know this seems to be a little odd since you always hear they will fight each other without going through some elaborate combining procedure but this has not been my experiance they stay strong and in the spring the splits always seem to be my strongest hives. I'm sure it confuses the bees for a bit but maybe that is why it works.
Along with what else you put in the split. make sure you have One full frame of capped brood,
These will become house bees soon. Then, making sure the queen is not on the frames you shake, a frame or two of extra bees in the split. The house bees on these frames will not fly back.
Then the rest should be history.doak
Just shake extra bees in to make up for the drift.