Splitting - Advice please

[spdas]

Aloha, from Hawaii. I captured a swarm about 3 months ago and did not get the queen. About a month ago I bought a mated queen and now have a ton of brood in various stages and plenty of young'uns. I started with my brood chamber as a shallow (I did not know any better) and had to add another shallow on top for housing. Now both shallow are loaded with brood, but less brood on top and a lot of honey. They must still be finding nectar as they are not using much sugar water. I ordered a bunch of supplies from Dadant and here is what I did...

1: Put a screened BB and tall super on the bottom and removed the 3 or so uninhabited frames from the old hive. On the bottom of the old hive (where the queen is, I left 4 shallow frames and intersperced tall frames/foundation and one drone foundation.
2: I started another hive right beside the old hive and put in 4 well populated short frames of brood in various stages of hatching and also a frame of what appeared to me to be 3 queen cells. I put a queen excluder in both hives above the tall super and under the short super. In the short super I put new foundation in the new hive and mostly honey and drawn cells in the top of the old hive. Sugar water in the new hive, none in the old.

Did I do things right?

Or what will happen?

What will keep the bees and new hatching brood from going back to the old hive that is 4 feet away and has a queen?

Is it a given the the current population of bees and brood realize there is no queen and make one?

Should I have switched locations of the two hives?

thanks
Frank

[BMAC]

Frank.  Experience will be your absolute best teacher.  To answer a few of your questions....

What you do with queen excluders is up to you.  Personally I dont use them except when rebuilding splits I have already made.

If you are sure your old queen is still in the old hive, and you have not damaged the queen cells then you are probably in pretty good shape for having 2 queen right colonies.

nothing will keep the bees from the new hive going back to the old.  Unless they are all nurse bees and never been out of the colony.  If they are nurse bees you will not see much drifting.  If you have all foragers you maybe left with no bees to tend the brood.  all hatching brood will stay.

In a few days or a week you will find out if you did it right.  Also in a few months you will find out if you should have made that split.  Depending on your weather in Hawaii and what is going to bloom soon.

[Bee Happy]

(I'm just posting to watch for replies and updates) I plan to split my favorite colony soon after the oaks tassel in the spring. (my sis and brother in law want bees on their property so I guess I have an outyard with them)

[Joelel]

Look under splits.

http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm

http://www.schoolnet.net.sb/courses/beekeeping1.0/how_to_split_a_hive.html

Other good bee keeping links

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/breeding.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_bee#Pollen_packing

http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/

[spdas]

Aloha, I peeked into the new brood deep super and found about 2/3 the number of bees that were there 2 days ago when I did the split.  I see a lot of comings and goings at the entrance and they sucked down a lot of sugar water.  No queen cells to speak of, or maybe just the start of one.  Lots of emerging young'uns in various stages, so I guess the next thing to hope for is a queen and the population to not get too depleted before/if a queen emerges??

thanks
Francis