splitting hives

[smittythesurveyor]

I have split big colonies in the spring to make more hives and make more manageable hives. All I did is take brood honey and queen cells and place in a super.

This has worked well for me.

Now it is fall (soon) and I have a couple of colonies that are very strong . My question is can I split those colonies the same way I did in the spring and feed during winter????

Thanks brian

p.s. iam no expert just have 12 hives

[Kris^]

I split a hive last weekend, unfortunately after it threw a swarm but before it swarmed again.  I figure if it doesn't work out, I can always recombine as fall sets in.

-- Kris

[Joseph Clemens]

Two weekends ago, at my apiary where I keep nothing but my "feral survivor stock" I did walk-away splits with two of the colonies there. I took two empty hives with me, consisting of medium depth supers, a few empty medium supers, some empty combs, frames with foundation, and top / bottom boards; and since both colonies the splits were made from were composed of 5 medium depth supers each, 3 of each were full of brood, honey, and pollen. I first located the queen and confined her to the queen-catching device I used to trap her, I then sorted and divided up the combs of brood, honey, and pollen. Each 1/2 of the splits received a nearly equal amount of each, arranged in the supers with sealed honey outside, then pollen adjacent to open brood, and sealed brood nearest the center. I then filled in with empty comb or foundation. I made sure to release the queen into the split which wound up at a different location, about 3-4 feet away.

I was also harvesting at this same time and am just about finished. Once I complete the harvest I shall return, check the status of the splits and return at least one empty super with comb or foundation to those hives that didn't get one right after harvest (I hadn't enough ready at the time I harvested, planned to return them right after harvest).

For those of you who believe my bees should be quite AHB by now I must report that these "feral survivors" are hardly "killer bee" agressive and of the 7 colonies I keep at that apiary, all are extremely vigorous and productive, yet only 1 of them swarmed this season. This past winter was exceptional even for us, temperatures were right and they had enough coming in that they converted all their stores into bees and by February they were each comprised of 5-7 medium supers -- honey light but boiling over with bees.

Since I haven't previously done any management for honey production (I  super too little) I suspect my harvest could be greatly improved if I gave the bees enough room to more easily store what is available to them.

[Finsky]

I split a hive last weekend, unfortunately after it threw a swarm but before it swarmed again.  I figure if it doesn't work out, I can always recombine as fall sets in.

-- Kris

Kris, I remember taht you have got swarms even before?

If it is so, I think that you should change your queens to get rid off swarms. Swarming is bees natural way to reproduce and human has eliminated that feature. Now they have got that "healthy " feature back into their genome.