another split question...

[tlynn]

I am splitting a hive with 2 brood boxes this week.  Queens arrive on Thursday and for this split I plan to move the box with my current queen in it (found her today and put queen excluders around the box) adjacent to where her hive was and and then set up the other box on a new SBB in the original hive location.  This I will do on Wednesday.  Then on Thursday I will just have to queen the queenless box and I'm done with that split.  I read that putting the old queen in a different location may simulate an already swarmed situation.   That was why I was relocating the queen next door.

So here's what I'm thinking - both brood boxes are packed with brood.  If I split them just taking one box on one side and one box on the other side, the hives will effectively have closed brood chambers from the get-go.  Should I do the interspersed thing where I put one empty frame between every 2 brood frames?  Now I need to figure out what to do whth the excess brood frames.  Could I put those in a nuc?  I decided to keep that one queen I was describing above (feral in AHB country so was a bit concerned, but bees are calm and she's prolific) so will have a leftover purchased queen which I could use in the nuc.

Does this all make sense?  Am I on the right track?  For a second year beek things just got a bit complicated this year!  :-)

[fermentedhiker]

or you could make a 3-way split, two 7 frame queenless and one 6 frame queenright, all with open broodnests.  Just a thought.

[homer]

or you could make a 3-way split, two 7 frame queenless and one 6 frame queenright, all with open broodnests.  Just a thought.

That's exactly what I did this year and so far so good!

[tlynn]

That sounds like a good idea.  Because I realized the nuc is going to be complete as well, and I would end up transferring it to a full right afterwards anyway.