Hive troubles! And is it to late to split?

[nepenthes]

My friend, has a hive, a nice feral hive. Not to aggressive, pretty average really. He caught it two years ago, and of course hasen't done any thing but rob it. It is a MESS inside. He had at least 10-15 lbs of honey in the super.. But the problem is... he didn't have any frames in it! It was all wild going every where burr comb. A deep down, their was 3 Frames of moldy comb, half of the comb wasn't drawn on through out the whole hive! Probably from the hive dieing one winter. And he left out a frame down the middle of two of the deeps.  :shock: A huge sheet ran through the hive. A pain to get out, theirs even a frame left of it in their! Can you beleive it?

Well, we have been talking and he wants to split the hive, which is all good and well of course... but it will be a pain! Any suggestions on how to fix this troubled hive? and prepare it for a possible split this time of year? I'm thinking its to late to split the hive, I wanna get up to 10 or so hives in the next few years. Hes got the acreage. Probably 15-20 Acres at expense to just load up with bees. Hes gonna be planting some buck wheat or something along those lines, a flower that puts off allot of pollen.

Thanks for any help

[Bill W.]

Well, you don't say how big the hive is.  It is not necessarily to late to split.

However, what you are talking about doing is not so much splitting as doing a hive removal.  You can move what you get into multiple hives and supply or raise a new queen, but the hard part is going to be sorting out all that comb.

[nepenthes]

Sorry, its late its been a long day! Ill try to be more specific in this post

The hive has three deeps, It had a super, thats where all the bur comb is, the middle deep, had the moldy comb frames are. Their were bees in the comb, and you could tell the girls tried to clean it out a bit, but I'm sure it was going to take allot of work for just the girls to do it. and thats where the Bur comb started. The Burr comb strip went up from the mid deep to the top deep. Right up to the queen excluder. I live in Mid West Ohio, gives you an idea about if it might be to late to split.

[Robo]

I would say just doing a cut out and straightening out the mess he has and getting things in order in a "framed" hive would be more then enough stress on them to recover from this year.  I think if you tried to split it as well your asking for trouble.   Get things in shape and let them recover from it before you worry about splitting.   

rob...

[nepenthes]

Okay, thanks