Background:
I have two colonies - one a package in a horizontal hive that is establishing itself quite nicely the other a feral hive that occupied a hive left empty last fall, overwintered and is THRIVING. The feral colony is in a langstrom setup single brood box, queen excluder and two honey supers - one is mostly full and the other I just put on. I have had feral hives before (my first one was feral - and died out after 2 years on a re-queen attempt) and these bees always make it through the winter and come on strong in the spring - they are good bees but some get too hot to handle. This hive is headed that way - I cannot make it into the brood box at all without my veil being covered.
I want to make the best of these bees if possible and am under the impression that a 3 or four way split could help in calming things down. Is this a good theory and if so should I just go about the normal split process getting them into 3 nucs and leaving the queen (if I find her) in the original box?
Any other recommendations over the split? I have not had good luck with requeening in the past though if I had a quiet colony in a langstrom box Id try to set that on top as per recommendation in another thread.
thanks in advance
I have two colonies - one a package in a horizontal hive that is establishing itself quite nicely the other a feral hive that occupied a hive left empty last fall, overwintered and is THRIVING. The feral colony is in a langstrom setup single brood box, queen excluder and two honey supers - one is mostly full and the other I just put on. I have had feral hives before (my first one was feral - and died out after 2 years on a re-queen attempt) and these bees always make it through the winter and come on strong in the spring - they are good bees but some get too hot to handle. This hive is headed that way - I cannot make it into the brood box at all without my veil being covered.
I want to make the best of these bees if possible and am under the impression that a 3 or four way split could help in calming things down. Is this a good theory and if so should I just go about the normal split process getting them into 3 nucs and leaving the queen (if I find her) in the original box?
Any other recommendations over the split? I have not had good luck with requeening in the past though if I had a quiet colony in a langstrom box Id try to set that on top as per recommendation in another thread.
thanks in advance