Plan for making summer splits with new queens

[ccar2000]

I have two packages that I started this year on drawn comb. They are both in double deep brood boxes now and doing well. I was thinking about making four splits for overwintering.
My thought is this:
Mail order caged queens equalize brood boxes with stores and brood frames
Five days before delivery install an excluder to isolate the queen
Use the frames from the queenless boxes to make up four nucs and install caged queens, same day.
I am thinking of doing this in August.
I would appreciate tips, pointers and guidance. Thank you

[joebrown]

Have you got any capped honey in supers? I do not know if you all get a good fall flow, but I prefer to have at least one shallow super of honey on my hives for winter. I have heard you can overwinter Nucs with a good brood frame filled with honey. The method sounds good, but make sure they will be able to build up their store before winter. You would hate to weaken to strong hives and lose them all.

[caticind]

Seems like a lot of extra trouble and expense compared to letting the nucs raise their own queens.  Is there a particular reason you want to introduce mated queens? 

Also, when does your main flow end?  Do you get a fall flow in your area, and when?  When do your average daytime temps drop below 50?

I'm asking because it looks like you are more interested in getting more hives than gathering honey.  Great!  So why do you need to introduce queens and maintain the peak brood rearing rate?  Especially if you have have a distinct dearth, the brood break enforced by making the nucs rear their own queens may actually improve the survival chances of the nuc.  Fewer bees will eat less during the dearth, and your population will rebound in time for the fall flow to build stores for winter.  Depending on how you deal with varroa, the brood break is also an excellent time to get the mite load under control.

[AllenF]

By ordering mated queens, you cut down the down time in raising brood.   By feeding, you can keep the numbers up during the split.  You are not trying to get honey out of the hives, just increase in numbers of hives.   That is the reason you do not want a cut in brood production. 

[caticind]

Hmmm, I see your point, but...

As long as the splits get big enough to make it through the winter, with either enough forage or late fall feeding, that's a success, right?  I don't need these hives to be as big as possible, just big enough.

It may be that I am coming at this with a strong geographical bias.  Central NC has a hot dry dearth in starting in July, and a weak (sometimes absent) fall flow, followed by a warm winter which keeps the bees from clustering until Thanksgiving or later. A hive which has the full produce of the main flow makes it through just fine, but a split can eat its way right through a couple of frames and starve if they are "keeping their numbers up".  Feeding during the dearth just makes it worse: if you're lucky they are stimulated to lay too many and drain their stores, if not they get robbed out.  Many locally adapted queens interrupt their laying at this time anyway, so splitting just before the dearth and waiting for them to rear a queen doesn't just save money but can also enhance the survival chances of the hive.

Perhaps my advice does not apply well for people who have strong fall flows and need a second spike in population to boost a split's chances.