[artic]

It has become apparent that I need to break up a brood nest more so than I originally thought, as detailed to me by the second swarm from the same hive (I though if a hive swarmed it essentially took care of the congestion, obliviously not in hindsight as it swarmed again 10 days later ) Now that I have a newly hived swarm I would not mind making it stronger with some brood, nurse bees and foragers seeing how I have a brood nest to break up any how, and I cant handle more that 2 hives now so I don't want a traditional split. Two questions in regards to doing this

Should I unite the swarm and split using the 'News Paper' (or such) method, or because the swarm came from the same hive the split is coming from is this unnecessary?

Secondly, if queen cells exist on the brood comb that is going to be part of the split should I remove them, or is it not likely that the new swarm + split will swarm again?

Also I doubt it will make any difference but the swarm came from a standard 2 story deep and 1 medium supered 10 frame Lang and the swarm is now housed in a long hive equivalent to 3 deeps.

[ April 18, 2006, 10:38 PM: Message edited by: artic ]

 

[peggjam]

Do a newspaper combine on them, ten days is ten days too long. Would help if you could find one of the queens before combining. I would leave the orginal hive the queen cells, or you will end up queenless in that one. The rest of it doesn't much matter as long as they can control the amount of space they are in.

 

[artic]

To clarify, the hive swarmed on the 8th of April originally, and that swarm absconded from my nuc some time between then and now. There were only 25 or so bees present when I checked them today, and they were a small swarm to start with. The hive then swarmed again late yesterday (Monday the 17th ) and I hived them today (Tuesday the 18th). I plan on doing the split Wednesday or Thursday, so the time between hiving the swarm and the combining of a split will only be a day or two.

 

[peggjam]

I wouldn't do a straight combine on anything thats been seperate more than 24 hours.