Wondering how to split/ideas

[TheCrazyBeeMan]

Well I was thinking that I should try to expand this year through splits for pollination for next year. I am thinking of waiting till I harvest the honey then throw on another deep of undrawn black plastic comb and either letting them draw it if the flow is on or feeding if its not. Then when both are full of bees and drawn out do a walk away split and go from 20 to 40 over night each one with ten frames of bees and honey/brood to go into winter with. For queens I was thinking of just purchasing 20 and insert them in the queenless hives. This is what I am thinking of doing and I am just wondering if this is a good idea or not. I really want full strong hives next year for pollination as my amount of drawn comb is very low and packages are too much up hear in Canada. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[MichaelW]

Here is a method I was told about and used. Anyone have some feedback on this, it seems flawed to me.

But before that, CrazyBeeMan I would think just one hive body would be to small a hive for overwintering, as far as I know you need more than that so you will have to feed alot to get all 40 to build an additional super.

Here's the method, we will split the hive by removing an entire box without the queen and put a new queen in it. Open the hive and look for eggs or the queen, if you can't find the queen or are in to much of a hurry, leave the box with the eggs on the current hive bottom. Move the other box to a new location, beside it is fine. Make sure this new box has brood, honey, and all the necessities. Now place your queen box on top of the new box. If the bees don't attack the new queen you know the old queen is in the other box. Close up and move on, checking back in the next few days to see if they took the queen.

The part that seems flawed is where you look for the bees attacking the new queen. It seems like to me the bees won't know that their old queen is in the other box so quickly. Unless, it is a reaction by the old queen that causes the bees to attack the new queen. So in this case the old queen wouldn't be there to sound the alarm. It worked for me this time, but I may have had some supersedure also. Any thoughts?

[Brian Suchan]

More than likely you would just end up with another box of honey before you would end up with another box of bees & brood. Best time to make splits up is int he spring, towards the end of the summer most colonies should be close to being broodless.

[peggjam]

MichaelW:

>The part that seems flawed is where you look for the bees attacking the new queen. It seems like to me the bees won't know that their old queen is in the other box so quickly. Unless, it is a reaction by the old queen that causes the bees to attack the new queen. So in this case the old queen wouldn't be there to sound the alarm. It worked for me this time, but I may have had some supersedure also. Any thoughts?

The bees go after the new queen because she smells different. So I guess if you wanted to make a split without finding the old queen, that would be one way of doing it. But I would not put the new queen in until after 24 hours, or at least overnight.

peggjam