Splits?

[allisono]

Hi All,

I was up at Dadant and was talking with them about doing my own splits.  As I am a pretty new bee keeper I have some questions.  It was recommended that I add an additional broodbox on my existing hives (current setup is a broodbox and a super-I left both my hives quite a bit of honey to overwinter) and of course then move the queen excluder up, so the queen/colony could start building/laying up in the second brood box as well as the current brood box.  I was told I could begin this about midway through February as long as the temperatures won't be too cool (right now we have lows in the 50's and highs in the 70's-80's.  My hives are looking pretty good :)  Couple question regarding this for those that have done it:

-How long on average should I leave the 2 brood box set-up in place before splitting them into 2 separate hives?  I'm sure this varies, but I am just wondering what is typical...
-Did you take a hit in your honey production or will the hives likely rebound quickly?  I realize it will take awhile for the queenless hive to get back on it's feet...  But what about the hive with the queen, will I still likely get a good crop?
-Provided I do my job well in splitting the 2 (making sure each has a pretty equal amount of pollen, honey, brood, and of course eggs for the queenless hive to raise their new queen) and keeping an eye on the queenless hive in particular afterwards (transfering some eggs/brood frames over during the weeks they are raising their queen to keep them busy, just like if a swarm took place), is this pretty successful and worthwhile?
-Anything I might be missing or overlooking that would be good for me to know?
-Is it possibele to use this method more than 1x/year with one's hives?

Would love to hear other's experience with this :)

Thanks all,
Allison

[BlueBee]

You don't need many frames of brood from your donor hive to create new one.  2 frames will do but will be slower to build up.  3 frames of brood is probably optimal IMO.  I like to split once a hive is booming since the field bees will stay with the original hive and it can build back up much quicker with a large field force. 

The less resources you steal from the main hive, the more bees and the more honey it will ultimately produce.  However if it is really booming with bees, stealing 2 or 3 frames of bees doesn't set them back much.

As for the success rates, I'm sure that varies wildly.  There are a number of things that can go wrong, but if you can keep the wax moths, beetles, and robbing at bay until your new queen mates and successfully returns, the odds of success are high.

Can you split multiple times?  This probably varies by location too.  In Michigan you can, I would assume you could in Gainesville too since you get plenty of rain in the summer!   

[FRAMEshift]

A good time to split is shortly before your main flow.... IF you do as Bluebee suggests and only remove a few frames for the split.  Remove the queen and two to three frames of eggs with all the nurse bees that were on the frames.  And a frame of honey.  Leave the capped brood and the foragers in the original hive.  With no new brood to raise, the bees in the larger hive can concentrate on foraging during the main flow.  The queen and the nurse bees will use the frame of honey to raise those eggs.  That smaller split will use the main flow to establish a new hive.  This should give you the best all around results.  A healthy split and lots of honey.

[Sundog]

More of a question than an answer, I have been contemplating a split also and I was thinking about buying two mated queens, one for the split, and one to re-queen the donor hive, since I don't know the origin of the original queen.  I think she is a local feral queen, the hive was a gift from a local Beek.  I'd like to tame them down a bit since I'm going to proliferate them, and I am not sure when a good time to do this would be down here, but I would think that the time is getting near.

Still having fun!

http://i865.photobucket.com/albums/ab218/Sunchaser01/DSCN0717.jpg

[backyard warrior]

the best time to do a split is before your main flow why?? It prevents losing a colony to a swarm and it relieves congestion in the hive and puts a damper on the reproduction of mites.   At the same time you get a new local raised queen and you should have lots of nurse bees to care for the raising of a new queen.  Chris

[FRAMEshift]

Those are good reasons.  And a major reason is to free up the adult bees and capped brood which will subsequently emerge to put their efforts into foraging, drawing comb, and storing honey.   And you want to be sure that when you do the split you leave some eggs or a queen cell in the original hive so they can raise a new queen.  That's a minor use of resources and you don't want them to remain queenless.  But other than raising the queen, the bees are not raising brood but rather are storing honey.

[allisono]

Thanks for the advice and suggestions folks :)  Much appreciated!