Making a split when you can't find the queen

[SlickMick]

I need to make a split of my only hive so that I have a backup available should I have an issue with my original hive as I had the last autumn (your fall)

We are in the first month of Spring here and there are 8 frames of brood and 2 of honey and pollen on the outside. It seems that I have to make room for the queen to lay also. The trouble is I can't find her to move her to the nuc. Fortunately there were no signs of swarm cells however I think that it would be only a matter of time before that happens.

Is there a problem with setting up the nuc and having the likelihood of the queen remaining in the hive with the nuc having to make it's own queen?

Mick

[Rurification]

I've done it a bunch of times.  The girls are good at raising their own queens.  [But wait until someone with real experience answers because I haven't been doing this long enough to give advice.]

[Acebird]

I would like to see equal amounts of brood and honey before I split.  Is there nectar coming in?

[iddee]

I would make the split, then 4 days later look for eggs. It will be easier to find her in the split. Then balance the brood as you see best.

[AR Beekeeper]

Use a box with your empty comb for the split on the bottom board.  Shake the bees from the combs of your colony into the new box with the empty comb and fill out the box with the combs of brood you want in the split.  Put on a queen excluder and put the box with the remaining combs of brood above.  In about an hour the nurse bees in the bottom box will come up through the excluder and cover the brood.  The queen is trapped below with nurse bees and the brood for the split. 

Move the upper box onto a new bottom board and a new location in the apiary.  The field bees will return to the old location with the queen and the weak split, the nurse bees remain at the new location and make a new queen.  The old queen on the original location will rebuild the bee population in her split quickly.  You can select the best queen cell built in the portion that was removed to the new spot for your new queen.  You can cut the remaining cells to prevent swarms leaving with the virgins.

[pjigar]

Where are you? If yout split and let them raise their own queen then you will have laying queen in 45 days (if drones are available). Think about would queen be able mate or would it be too cold? Either way you will have to do heavy feeding before cold sets in.

I am in North Texas and did a split 9 days ago. Capped queen cells observed after a week of split. I see lots of drones flying and capped drones so I am hoping I will have mated queen. 


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[Acebird]

The op is on the dark side just coming into spring but with 8 brood frames and only two honey frames I think there is no nectar coming in.  To me if that is all there is it is a small colony with not a lot of resources.  Not what I call ideal splitting conditions.

[SlickMick]

 Thanks for the advice, guys.

I should mention that the girls are bringing in plenty of nectar at the moment. I have a long season of nectar flow being in the sub tropics with native forest in about 60% of their foraging range. This is being stored in the 3 half depth supers at the moment.

Mick

[cao]

I would probably just split it in half as best as you can and check back in a week for queen cells.  As long as you have a flow going and drones flying the bees should take care of the rest.

[Acebird]

This is being stored in the 3 half depth supers at the moment.
Mick

That is a whole different ball game if you have three supers on.  Go ahead and split anyway you want.  If it is a weak split make sure there are enough bees in it.

[SlickMick]

Thanks guys, I appreciate your assistance

Mick

[Michael Bush]

I usually don't even try to find the queen when I do a split...