splitting 2 hives to make 3rd

[vabeeguy]

Hi Ya'll, This is may second year of beekeeping and it's been nothing pure joy and relaxtion dealing with my bees. I have 2 packages that I started last spring and both are fully packed and are going strong this early spring. I added a new package about a week ago they too are good. I want to add a 4th hive and was thinking about splitting the 2 large hives taking sone nurses, brood and queen cells along with some drawn full and empty comb from both and combining into one then treat them as I would a new package. Is this a good idea? Any suggestions on how to make this work?

[Finsky]

How strong are your hives, how many boxes and how many frames of brood?

When you have new this spring nuc, it is better that you aid it to become strong fast.  You should get it 10 frames full of bees.  Give to it 2 frames of emerging bees and it gets a good kick up.

Hive is strong enough to make small nuc it there are bees 3 langtroth boxes. You spoil this year's yield if you split your hives.  

When hive has  5 boxes, then it is easy to make more nucs.

But it is better buy commercial egg laying queens. When you take your own queen cells it is  slowest way to do the job.

When you say that it is early spring, you have no hurry to do splits or nucs. Wait and do them later.

[Apis629]

You may want to just split one hive.  The bees from 2 different colonies may fight and that way you sill at least have one producer of honey for this year.

[Finsky]

When you make more hives, it is better make when hives are largest.

Prevent swarming and therefore to split is good method but purpose is not make more hives.

When honey season is over, you may devide your big hive into 2 or 3 if they have time to raise wintering bees.

In summer you bye a new queen. You take a frame or emerging bees, and so it starts. When hive is settled after 3 days, you put queen into nuc.
Later you add emerging bees and soon it is one box hive.

To get emerging bees, you should have big hives and it gathers yield normally.