Can anyone see any issue(s) with splitting 2 hives (as a swarm impulse reducing measure), by moving brood frames and nurse bees from each of them, and putting them together in a separate hive?
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Good idea. I have done it and it works well. Use lots of smoke and the bees won’t fight. Make sure they have a few frames of food, as there won’t be many foragers for a couple of weeks.
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Hi Dan, that’s exactly what I do. I rule of thumb is to put equal numbers of frames containing brood with bees into a different hive. I checkerboard the frames, that is a frame from hive A followed by a frame from hive B & so on. I often take 3 frames each from 3 colonies to put into one brood box. Same thing goes there, ABCABCABC. A split like that normally needs splitting once the queen cells are developed, otherwise that split can get overcrowded & swarm. Mainly because I take the brood frames with the most sealed brood.
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You’re welcome Dan, I tried & failed to include this video last night. I’ll try again.
I wrongly said that a lot of bees have hatched, I should have said emerged.
Take a look at those frames of sealed brood that I show. They kind of resemble that beautiful frame of sealed brood someone showed on the forum recently. They are from my naturally selected queens. cheers
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