Dying bees ????????????? helpful advice needed

[Dustymunky]

Good news dj! Foragers will go back to old hive but the nurse bees should stay with the split. Make sure split has enough resources and nurse bees to make it till the young bees graduate to forager caste. I would keep entrance small too since there wont be many guard bees. Queenless hives are also prone to robbing. Putting a stick or something like that in front of the new hive is supposed to cause bees to reorient to new location but i think most foragers will still go back to old hive. You can also screen in the bees in split till after dark to force them to stay overnight.  As long as they have resources and dont get robbed too much u should be fine.

I wouldnt consider drone comb a problem. Its natural urge for bees to make drones in spring. I believe they like about 25% of brood to be drone. If you were using all worker foundation the bees would build drones in all the bridge comb or anywhere else they could make it. Good luck with splits. Queen castle or nucs are really good for queen rearing btw.

[cao]

It is good to have the help on site to solve your problem. 

>He also informed me that I need to put the splits into a different yard or the bees could / would fly back to the original hive...... How can I prevent this I do not have an additional yard ?

I keep them in the same yard.  Sometimes the split is set right next to the original.  I would find the queen and take that frame with a couple others that contain some honey/nectar and pollen and put them in your new box.  That would simulate a swarm.  I find that more bees stay with the split when the queen is there. 

[djgriggs]

The general idea is to make the splits using capped brood x2 maybe 3 capped if have it. and one uncapped brood 1 / 2 honey / nectar. EHBBBBHE.. one of the brood frames that I will be using also have a queen cell.. one of the splits will be given a brood frame that includes 2 queen cells uncapped . the other split will have a brood with one capped queen cell. I want to keep the genetics as these bees / queen are of good quality / stock. :)

[cao]

Since they are already set to swarm, just removing queen cells won't guarentee that they queen won't swarm anyway.  That is the reason why I move the queen.  I also make pretty skimpy splits.  I will usually only pull three frames and put them in a 5 frame nuc.  That's medium frames, usually only 2 if they are deep frames.  That way if the split doesn't work it is not a great loss.  You always have the possibility that the new queen won't make it back from her mating flight.  This year I've been pretty lucky in that respect.  Probably running about 90% making it back. 

[djgriggs]

Since they are already set to swarm, just removing queen cells won't guarentee that they queen won't swarm anyway.  That is the reason why I move the queen.  I also make pretty skimpy splits.  I will usually only pull three frames and put them in a 5 frame nuc.  That's medium frames, usually only 2 if they are deep frames.  That way if the split doesn't work it is not a great loss.  You always have the possibility that the new queen won't make it back from her mating flight.  This year I've been pretty lucky in that respect.  Probably running about 90% making it back.

Interesting, I didn?t consider the queen not making it back

[djgriggs]

The general idea is to make the splits using capped brood x2 maybe 3 capped if have it. and one uncapped brood 1 / 2 honey / nectar. EHBBBBHE.. one of the brood frames that I will be using also have a queen cell.. one of the splits will be given a brood frame that includes 2 queen cells uncapped . the other split will have a brood with one capped queen cell. I want to keep the genetics as these bees / queen are of good quality / stock. :)

E= empty
H= honey
B= brood

[Bamboo]

>He also informed me that I need to put the splits into a different yard or the bees could / would fly back to the original hive...... How can I prevent this I do not have an additional yard ?

I keep them in the same yard.  Sometimes the split is set right next to the original.  I would find the queen and take that frame with a couple others that contain some honey/nectar and pollen and put them in your new box.  That would simulate a swarm.  I find that more bees stay with the split when the queen is there.

You can also once you have done your splits shift the original hive about 10 ft or so away from it's original position and have the splits where the original hive was. This means that the existing foragers will fly back to the original position meaning the new splits. The "parent" hive will have new brood hatching and they will orient to their new position thus keeping the bee population up in all the hives.
Cheers