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So I've pretty much mastered the "art" of making more bees, but this was only due to necessity.
Due to some neglect of my bees this spring and some rather prolific queens, I was able to turn 2 hives into...9! Granted, 3 of those were with new queens as I had ordered BEFORE I realized I had this problem, but the resources for those queens all came from the parent hives. I could do two more splits if I used all the frames with queen cells. I ran out of nuc boxes and two of the nucs have two frames with queen cells. I built more nucs and might split them tomorrow so there is one frame with a capped queen cell in each nuc. Although I'll be removing 9-11 frames of brood from the two parent hives, this wasn't enough to even make a ding in what she's been doing in there. In less than a week the girls have drawn out more comb and the queens are filling it as fast as they can....crazy. I also placed a frame of mixed honey/nectar/bee bread per nuc per standard protocol.
My question, however, is mastering the art of honey making. I was told that once all my new queens start laying I could place frames of brood back into the older parent hives that I hope to use for honey production. This will get their numbers up fairly quickly and more bees = more foragers = more honey.
I was also told to move any frames with honey up to my honey super (I used deeps for everything) and placing all the brood on the two bottom boxes? This of course done and organized accordingly when moving brood from the "new" hives.
Any other tips and tricks to both keep your hive from swarming AND producing lots and lots of honey? We have a major nectar flow just starting and I'm wanting to take full advantage.
The two hives on the right of the stand, two deeps tall, are the parent hives...ALL other hives/nucs are result of queen cells/new queens. The one hive on the ground I'll be moving to a nuc in the morning since the next round of DIY nuc's sealant will be cured.

Due to some neglect of my bees this spring and some rather prolific queens, I was able to turn 2 hives into...9! Granted, 3 of those were with new queens as I had ordered BEFORE I realized I had this problem, but the resources for those queens all came from the parent hives. I could do two more splits if I used all the frames with queen cells. I ran out of nuc boxes and two of the nucs have two frames with queen cells. I built more nucs and might split them tomorrow so there is one frame with a capped queen cell in each nuc. Although I'll be removing 9-11 frames of brood from the two parent hives, this wasn't enough to even make a ding in what she's been doing in there. In less than a week the girls have drawn out more comb and the queens are filling it as fast as they can....crazy. I also placed a frame of mixed honey/nectar/bee bread per nuc per standard protocol.
My question, however, is mastering the art of honey making. I was told that once all my new queens start laying I could place frames of brood back into the older parent hives that I hope to use for honey production. This will get their numbers up fairly quickly and more bees = more foragers = more honey.
I was also told to move any frames with honey up to my honey super (I used deeps for everything) and placing all the brood on the two bottom boxes? This of course done and organized accordingly when moving brood from the "new" hives.
Any other tips and tricks to both keep your hive from swarming AND producing lots and lots of honey? We have a major nectar flow just starting and I'm wanting to take full advantage.
The two hives on the right of the stand, two deeps tall, are the parent hives...ALL other hives/nucs are result of queen cells/new queens. The one hive on the ground I'll be moving to a nuc in the morning since the next round of DIY nuc's sealant will be cured.
