I live in NW Florida. Now at the end of the flow, the top 10 frames deep box is full of honey, no broods or eggs. The bottom box is full of broods and eggs. I also found 5 swarm cells. Is it better to add a box or to split the hive? Thanks for the help in advance.
Split. Once they decide to swarm it is very difficult to keep them from swarming.
You will need to do an artificial swarm.
Find the queen and place her and about half of the brood/honey/pollen into another brood box. This will make the hive think it swarmed. Keep the swarm cells in the original hive and let them grow their own.
Some people will take the split away at least 2 miles...others will argue it's not necessary.
Where are the queen cells?
They may be superceedure cell.
If you move the queen to the new hive/location, you can leave both hives in the same area.
Jim
Or take all but one frame of brood. Put rest of the brood and bees with queen cells in another box and shift them 2 miles.
The queen is left with a heap of field bees and a little brood and she thinks she has swarmed.
If they want to supercede her then it will happen as she lays again and the hive is strong enough, they will form queen cells, this time let the process continue.
All the swarm cells are in the bottom of 2 frames. How should I divide the 10 deep frames of capped honey for the bees? Do I have to worry about robbing?
Quote from: Oldbeavo on July 07, 2017, 09:17:34 AM
The queen is left with a heap of field bees and a little brood and she thinks she has swarmed.
The queen doesn't think. The rest of the colony may come to that consensus.
Sounds like you should have added the box sooner. I would play it as a supercedure and let it play out. You could make a small split for insurance if the bottom box has BOAA. Brood of all ages.
Thank you for your helps. I did an artificial swarm today. I'll will update in a few weeks.
May have been just a stroke of luck, but I had a hive (marked queen) and they had built up a bunch of queen cells. An older more experienced guy told me to put them in another hive body and take them to my other yard. I did that and sure enough they didn't swarm and I still have that marked queen in that hive. They tore down those Queen cells and all is good. That was well over a month ago.