Spring is finally his here in Perth and I am going to need to split at least one of my colonies before they decide to swarm. The only slight issue is that we don’t have a Nuc box and neither do our local supplies store. I am therefore thinking of splitting into an 8 frame box, but just wanted to run my plan past all the experts on the forum
My plan is to put 2 frames of brood (emerging and eggs) from one hive and one frame of brood (minus bees) from the other. We have a lot of honey frames so I was going to put one on each side of the brood nest, then 3 foundation frames on the outside. Shake in some extra bees and we should have my new hive in the making! So the order I was thinking was:
F H B B B F H F
Does that sound about right? If I put in emerging brood, it shouldn’t need that much warmth and i’m Hoping the honey will provide some insulation.
It should work, but it would be even better if you could spare 4 frames of brood from your 2 other hives. If you can’t, I would just go ahead anyway with the plan you describe.
Or what I do for swarm control is
Move the original box away a good six feet
Take out one frame with the queen on and put into an empty box with foundation and put that in the place your original hive was.
All the flyers return to the empty box and start a new home.
The old box makes a new queen
You have to take care of unwanted queen cells but it’s easy.
@Dee
Do you think it would also work if one was to put the queenright split in the new spot and had the flyers return to the queenless split (at the original site)?
Yes
Put one or two frames of brood, one emerging and one open young brood (eggs and very small larvae) PLUS shake two or three frames worth of nurse bees. They will make a new queen and you probably won’t have to thin QCs.
Back with queen you will have to feed for a short while as they have no foraging bees.
I prefer doing it my way as I don’t forfeit my honey crop.
Instead of feeding, could I just put in some frames of capped honey with the queen in the brood box?
Can I ask why there is more danger with swarming when you move the new hive vs moving the queen? I have always left new hives alone to make a queen without disturbing them, but I guess using this method i’d Have to check weekly.
Such amazing info here on this forum, Thanks to everyone for the education you are spreading around!!!
Yes, frames of honey are fine
I had another thought
If you are making a split not reacting to queen cells it doesn’t really matter where you put the queen.
(Can I ask why there is more danger with swarming when you move the new hive vs moving the queen?)
I did just that two weeks ago moved the hive not the queen, checked yesterday & queens from hives have swarmed ( saw one in process of swarming the other left the day before) plenty of queens cells though, then checked the nucs, cells hatched didn’t spot queens but could have been on the wing.
If I had moved the queen rather than the queen cells she may have been fooled into thinking she had swarmed & stayed in the nuc meanwhile rest of colony would have still made queen cells then I could have rejoined hive & nuc making a stronger hive.
Well that’s my theory BUT I may have that all wrong:innocent:
