Splitting a Hive
There are a number of reasons for splitting a hive:
- To increase the number of producing hives either in the current year or in the following year
- To reduce the size of colonies to discourage swarming and to put off 'peaking' until the expected flow.
- Control of varroa
- To produce income from sale of nucs
The time of year and size of the splits will determine how much honey the splits will make in the first year, if any. It will also determine whether they will be trouble free or a waste of time, effort and bees. Generally the earlier and the larger the split, the more they will produce and the easier they will be to manage, assuming that pollen and nectar are available at time of splitting.
A minimum of six weeks before a target flow is considered minimum lead time. Brood must be available in all stages of the brood box in the mother hive.
When you have decided to split an overpopulated hive it is best done in late May or early June.
- First assemble a nuc-box, a small hive that holds 4 frames.
- Then identify which frame the queen is on in the mother hive as the current queen needs to stay with the original hive.
- Remove two brood frames (without the existing queen) and two honey and pollen frames from the crowded mother hive, placing them in the nuc-box.
- Replace the four empty slots in the mother hive with empty comb.
- Do not brush the bees off the four frames as you move them to the nuc-box because they will create queen cells and produce a queen (usually a fairly good one if populations and stores are good and the weather is co-operative) and rear the brood in the new hive.
- When the population of the nuc-box increases until it becomes crowded, move the colony into a super with six more frames of comb.
The major problem with this method is the 21-day broodless period (14 days queenless + 7 days to mate and start laying), so they have to be made early to make to reasonable strength in time for the flow.