[jbraun]

I have one small split, 1+1/2 frame of bees. They were created on 5/1/14. They don't appear to have started as laying workers yet 6/23/14. I have a few hives that are pretty full, 10 frames of brood. I was thinking about splitting one of the full hives and combining it with the queenless hive. Just doing an even split from both of them.

Do you think that's a good or a bad idea?

Should I just shake out the QL hive since it's so small anyway?

 

[squarepeg]

small, and those bees are pretty old by now and don't have much to offer. i would consider shaking them out. some may join up with your other colonies. freeze the comb for a few nights to kill any possible shb and/or wax moth eggs, it will come in handy.

 

[Clayton Huestis]

Are you planning on wintering the split as a nuc? What are your intentions with it would help answer you better?

 

[jbraun]

I guess sometimes you just have to call a loss a loss. Accepting that why would I try to save that split at the expense of a robust hive?

Disregarding the weak split, I may try and split a good hive to create a couple of good nucs to expand my apiary. I was reading here that post Solstice queens do great the next year.

Earlier this year I asked if April was a good time to do splits. MB replied to me that April 5 seemed way to early. April 15 is the average start of our swarm season here near St.Louis.

I waited til May 1 to do my splits with less than stellar results. Our main flow seems to be over now. I guess I assumed you couldn't do splits after the main flow. Now I just need to decide if I want to feed nucs or accept the number of hives I have now.

 

[Slow Drone]

The flow is an ideal time to do splits not the only time to do them. Granted I'm not in your area but I split until the middle of August. It's what you put in your split when you build them that makes the difference between success and failure. In April I do 2 frame splits in August it's 4 frames.