Help with Spliting

[Kirk-o]

I'm going to make some splits.I'm very Gimpy bad legs what do I do to keep the bees from going back to there old location I have new queens for my splits.
kirko

[tig]

how far are they from the old location?  are you doing an on site or off site split?  if you want them not to go back to the old location, put them some distance from the original location, i would say at least 100 mts and preferably farther than that.

[Finsky]

!) Only way is to take 2 frames of emerging bees from hive at evening. When bees emerge during couple of days old bees return to home and emerged stays in new home. Many older bees will stay in nuc.

It takes some days to put in condition those nucs.

2) Another way is to put two frame of emerging bees into hive box and you put it over big hive. You have mesh between old hive and new box. Then you shut all holes and put queen with emerging bees. You must shake all other bees aways because they will attach on new queen.

When all holes are stuck and you wait 3 days, nuc has so much bees that they manage by themselves.

Then you put new box to it's site and restrict the room to two frame. You may make from polyuretane board 5- frame nuc hives or mating hives.

[tig]

i normally use a combination of on site and off site.  before i introduce the queen, i make a split and put it right bedside the mother colony to encourage the older bees to go back to the original colony, leaving the nuc with mostly young bees.  then i move the nuc out a day after and thats when i introduce the queen.  young bees accept a new queen much readily than older bees.  it helps keeping queen mortality down.

[Michael Bush]

If you shake twice as many bees into the new hive as you want, half will go back.  :)

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm