cut down split

[twb]

The concept (read on the MB site) sounds good to me.  It sounds like no purchase of a new queen and still get the honey plus a new queen.  If it sounds too good to be true..... 

I have a boomer hive with 8 frames of brood in lower deep, a med on that with brood (I'm working toward all mediums) and a deep with honey for them to clean out on top, into which the queen has been laying also.  So, let's say I get 7 or 8 frames with capped plus honey/pollen into one deep, plus the frame of eggs, leave it queenless.  Now, honey supers on top of this? And they will fill them with honey for me?  Meanwhile the rest is in a deep with a med on top and they proceed to build up as usual?  Thank you.

[Michael Bush]

You can do a cut down, but you can't do a optimum one.  A optimum cut down would require the same sized frames in both boxes, so you can take out all the open brood (to free up the foragers).  Still you can put the split on a different stand and they will loose foragers to the production hive and the production hive will get crowded into the supers and will end up broodless while they rear a queen.

[twb]

I must not understand yet.  It would seem to me to accomplish the desired effect for at least the one hive to fill it with as much sealed brood as possible, say, 7 frames sealed brood, 2 frames of honey/pollen and then the 1 frame with eggs.  Leave it queenless and on the original hive's stand. Put honey supers on top, and when they raise a new queen and she starts laying put brood supers "on" under the filled(hopefully) honey supers.  Am I close to understanding?

[Michael Bush]

>I must not understand yet.  It would seem to me to accomplish the desired effect for at least the one hive to fill it with as much sealed brood as possible, say, 7 frames sealed brood, 2 frames of honey/pollen and then the 1 frame with eggs.  Leave it queenless and on the original hive's stand.

Correct.  But if the open brood and the capped brood are in two different sized frames, how do you consolidate down to one box for each half of the split with the sealed in one and the open in the other?

> Put honey supers on top, and when they raise a new queen and she starts laying put brood supers "on" under the filled(hopefully) honey supers.

I'm not sure I understand the "put brood uspers on under the filled honey supers.  Each half of the cutdown has a brood box.  The old location has it full of capped brood and the new location has it full of open brood.  No need to add a brood box unless the queen fills that one.  if she does, then sure, add one.

The concepts of a cut down split are:

o  You free up bees to forage because they have no brood to care for (by removing the open brood and leaving the emerging brood that doesn't require feeding).
o  You crowd the bees up into the supers to maximize them drawing comb.
o  You do all of this just before the main flow (not more than two weeks before) so that you maximize the work force for the flow by rearing brood up until then and then you free up more foragers, who would have been nurse bees.

My point isn't that you can't do some of that with two different sized brood boxes, you can accomplish the cut down part.  You can probably even move the open brood to a different hive if it's the wrong size for the brood box in the new split, but you won't be able to sort all of the brood into the two types in two boxes since you have two different sized frames.

[twb]

O.K. I think I understand.  Maybe I was not clear about this hive's setup.  I have a bottom deep, a medium with brood etc, and then a deep with honey and now some brood also (this complicated things for me--I was hoping the bees would clean it out so I could remove it).  I was thinking of making one deep with sealed brood only(plus the eggs frame and honey frames) then put all other deep frames into the top deep and use it as base of the "other" hive and place the medium on top of it regardless of the contents of the medium.

I could also, I think, just lift off the topmost deep and let it make its own queen but I liked the cut down concept more since you still get honey from the queenless hive.  As fast as they are building up I may have to opt for this.  Thanks for your insights.  I enjoy learning.