I got my first two packages of bees at the start of November, one of the queens was DOA, so I combined the two packages. At the start of December, I got another two packages, along with an extra queen. I did some juggling and ended up with four hives.
Earlier in November, I had a go at splitting an abandoned hive at Dad's place, but that didn't work out so well; the split died off. On 27 December last year, I had another crack at it, but this time rather than split into an 8 frame deep hive, I made myself a nuc hive and tried that; it worked!
Here's the result, filmed yesterday. Tomorrow, I'm going to build another nuc hive and if any of these queen cells are still viable, I'll use them for a head start on another hive.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v19/1shot1kill/The%20Shack/virginqueen_zps733f9e41.jpg)
If you look closely, one cell hatched out. That new queen probably killed the other 3 queens in their cells. If they were further apart, the bees might have stopped her from killing them but only if the hive was strong enough to support multiple swarms.
Good luck.
Jim
Well done.
I can't wait to try splitting a hive next spring. Good luck with the split, I hope it builds up fast.
Oak