Is it alright to split a hive 3 ways?

[Sirjonvh]

I have a 10 frame lang that is really strong. I am going to split it but if its good practice I would like to get 2 out of it. Would this be pressing my luck?

Thank you,
Jonathan

[AmericasBeekeeper]

A two-way 5 frame would be safer. All these hives are three-way 3 frame splits. This will be the third year we run 3 frame splits for new beekeepers. http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=240460

[Michael Bush]

It's all about "critical mass". You can split a 20 frame box of bees and honey into 10 two frame nucs, but they will struggle and probably not amount to anything. You can take the same 20 frames and make two nucs that may do pretty well. It's not a distinct boundary, but the line for "critical mass" is pretty much the equivalent of a ten frame deep (or two eight frame mediums) full of bees and stores or brood. Then about the same space for them to expand and that should be done during the main buildup or during the early part of the flow. These hives are big enough to meet their needs and have enough spare labor and resources to grow. A small nuc sill struggle because it doesn't really have enough bees and resources to build up quickly. A queen can lay thousands of eggs a day and in order to build up quickly a hive should have enough bees to raise those thousands of eggs. If you split a hive into two strong splits, and they really take off, you may be able to split them again in a month. If you split the same one into four to start with, they will not build up as quickly.