Best use of splitable hive

[talkingamoeba]

Hello. I have one hive that is from a swarm last year. The parent feral colony has swarmed at least 9 times in the last 3 years. My hive is doing very well and I had intended to take 2 or 3 frames later in May as a split, hopefully keeping the hive from swarming while still allowing the possibility that I might harvest 12 pints of honey for our use from the donor hive. However, I have 4 packages coming next week and after reading many of the posts on here, I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off putting one frame of brood with nurse bees in each of the boxes when I hive my packages. What do you think?

[okb]

Sounds like a good idea you have there.

[Aspera]

I would remove all of the capped brood and place it with your packages to keep them from dwindling. Do this with the understanding that you are definitely innoculating the packages with varroa. This transfer of sealed brood is also a very effective way to keep the "splitable" hive from swarming, and will reduce its buildup of varroa.

[talkingamoeba]

If I take all of the brood won't that prevent getting any honey to harvest?

[ScadsOBees]

I would remove all of the capped brood

Capped brood, not open brood. And yes, it will knock back your hive a bit and reduce the honey that you will get, but any anti-swarming technique does that. I don't think it will eliminate the harvest, but that depends more on the weather....

[talkingamoeba]

When I remove the capped brood, can I place all the frames in an empty hive body and take it all with me and add the frames to the new hive bodies so that I only mess with the donor colony once?

[Aspera]

Yes, one of the many advantages of using capped brood is that it is less susceptable to temperature and humidity shock during hive manipulations. Open brood secretes anti-swarming pheromones and should be left behind. Open brood also tends to be associated more with diseases (all comb carries disease).

[talkingamoeba]

OK, so the packages aren't coming this week. I called Wed. and they are running behind so they say the end of this coming week I should have them. In the meantime as I've read other posts and I have some more questions. When I pull the frames of brood do I put them in the new hive before I shake the package in? Also, somewhere I read that the house bees on the frames should be left on as the packages don't have any, then I read in a post about adding frames to a lagging newly established hive that the bees should be shaken off. Are they unlikely to have a disagreement if they are put together when actually installing? Thanks for all the advice. It's a very busy time here on the farm, but I find myself anxiously awaiting the packages and even trying to talk the ferals in the wall into swarming (hasn't worked yet). The one lonely hive and all the empty hive bodies is starting to bug me

[sierrabees]

If your main honey flow is due soon, I would open the brood nest using the system Michael Bush has on his web site but instead of just opening it I'd take every third frame of brood for the nucs. If you leave most of the sealed brood behind you will have plenty of emerging bees to handle the honey flow and it should prevent swarming. I wouldn't set up the nucs more than a couple of hours before putting a new queen in (in a cage) to keep them from starting emergancy cells and rejecting your expensive new queens.