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Splitting a Top-bar hive

33K views 36 replies 19 participants last post by  ruthiesbees 
#1 · (Edited)
Hello everyone,

I'm sure I'm overthinking this whole issue, but I am curious to read what "splitting" method you guys use. I am new to beekeeping and I'm just planning ahead and researching as much as possible. When I took a beekeeping course, the instructor explained how he does splits and this is basically what he does when he sees advanced swarm queen cells.

  • Finds the Old Queen and moves the Brood comb where she's at and 2 other brood combs to a new hive. (all the bees on these combs are also taken to the new hive)
  • Moves 2 honey combs (and the bees on these combs) and places one on each side of the brood combs
  • Inserts empty bars at the ends

So the new hive will look like this:
Empty Bars, Honey, Brood, Brood with Queen, Brood, Honey, Empty Bars

The old hive is now left to finish raising a new queen.

I've seen online or in books where some leave the Old Queen in the Current hive and move the brood comb with the Queen cells and some honey comb to the new hive instead.

Which method do you guys use? Or do you have your own variation or method that you feel works best?
 
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#37 ·
during the heavy nectar flow when my big hives fill up, I relieve some of the congesting in that hive by taking about 5 bars of the uncapped nectar and donating it to a smaller colony that I have going. That can allow the big hive to gather more nectar and the little hives benefit from their hard work, and they have no problem capping it off or using it.

As for splitting, I usually head off the early spring swarms by stealing 3 bars of capped worker brood over to either a smaller nuc or making up a little nuc.
 
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