We tried a split. Questions

Well today we tried our first split with a queen that we bought. We open our hive from a year ago and it was going strong. So we decided on trying a split. After a long look we finally found our queen in the bottom brood box. So we made sure that we kept an eye on her and took 9 drawn frames with some honey and a little brood from the strong hive into a new deep and placed the new queen while in her cage in the new deep move the new box 10 or so feet away and feed them.

Couple of questions:

Is this far enough away?

I thought about closing the entrance off for a couple of days so they get use to her, is that a good idea?

Any ideas and comments appreciated.

Thanks

How "little" is "a little brood"? I'd want a few frames of brood - open & capped - when making a split. Plus, I'd want those frames covered with nurse bees.

Ten feet away is fine if you're making a split with nurse bees. Since they've never been out of the hive, they won't return to the original. I've never closed off the entrance. If you kept the new queen in the cage, that should be sufficient.

Yes, make sure you gave them enough brood. But assuming that you have (and I've done splits with very little brood although I gave them a lot of bees), you can put the new colony pretty close. You might get a little drifting back but that's normal. I've done splits into nuc's and put the nuc right on top of the hive I split them from.