When performing a false swarm split, the queen gets pulled as a 4-5 frame nuc. From there I read conflicting next moves. Should the remainder of the hive also be split into nucs with a queen cell each (in my case for a total of 3 nucs), or should you simply leave the old hive as is and let them settle out....we are not worried about honey production this year, just want to have best shot at still having bees(some) come spring.
In either case of queen cell nucs or old hive should the number of queen cells (capped) be reduced to one or two or can you leave them all and allow the first to emerge to take care of it for you?
Is this a time when the it might be a good idea to destroy some of the cells....I would rather not unless recommended.
If you already have capped queen cells, chances are your queen has already swarmed. In that case, since you are not concerned with honey production, it would be fine to divide the hive into nucs with at least one queen cell in each nuc.
If you are doing a preemptive false swarm to prevent a swarm, you take the queen and 4-5 frames into a nuc and let the original hive raise a new queen.
No, you should not destroy any queen cells. Some people think that reducing the number to one will prevent after-swarms, but I don't think there is any evidence for that. You should remove queen cells from the hive only to make nucs with them.