What do you say,best way to split ?

[Joelel]

We are going to split 4 nucs from 1 hive,buy queens. Do ya make splits and lock them in a day, then introduce the queen or put the queen in and lock them at the same time. Do you take the splits 2 miles away or the hive you split from ? Do you keep all at same location and move hives around ? How do you do it ? I read all different ways,what worked good for you ?

[jclark96]

Only made a few splits, I put the queen excluder, waited 3-4 days, split the boxes, waited 24 hours, then introduced the queen to the one with no eggs. I guess the same thing would work 4 ways but you would have to find the queen in the box she was in to avoid wasting a queen. I always left them next to the original hive but put hay in front of the entrance.

[Michael Bush]

I never  close them in at all.  I never take them two miles away.  I usually don't introduce a queen, although I often introduce a queen cell, but I also often just do a walk away split to maintain more genetic diversity and to keep all of the genetics from my good hives.

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

[Joelel]

Only made a few splits, I put the queen excluder, waited 3-4 days, split the boxes, waited 24 hours, then introduced the queen to the one with no eggs. I guess the same thing would work 4 ways but you would have to find the queen in the box she was in to avoid wasting a queen. I always left them next to the original hive but put hay in front of the entrance.

Why don't you put no eggs in the one with the new queen ?  What does the hay do ?

[indypartridge]

Only made a few splits, I put the queen excluder, waited 3-4 days, split the boxes, waited 24 hours, then introduced the queen to the one with no eggs. I guess the same thing would work 4 ways but you would have to find the queen in the box she was in to avoid wasting a queen. I always left them next to the original hive but put hay in front of the entrance.

Why don't you put no eggs in the one with the new queen ?  What does the hay do ?

What JClark is saying is that instead of looking for the queen when making a split, he puts a queen excluder between the brood chamber boxes, then a few days later the hive body without eggs is the one without the queen. He adds a queen to that one to have two queen-right colonies.

Hay (grass or a branch) in the entrance is to "encourage" the bees to re-orient and not fly back to the original location.

[beryfarmer]

I would love to do a walk away split however i am concerned that my 2nd hive is 3 ft from the existing hive and drift.  I guess the suggestion might be the following:

1. put physical marker in front of new hive to give orientation differentiation
2. seal up split hive for a few days while feeding

any other advice.

the only other good location is 5 ft away on the other side of a grape vine arbor  but cant set up for another 6 weeks

Have 0.6 acre lot in suburbs