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I find it useful to put the feed-hole off centre so it can be rotated over the cluster in winter

Yes but one of the 3 may have contained the original queen - if it did and she was quite old they may look to immediately supercede her

The time taken depends on the weather to a large extent - if it is very good it can be faster but 4-5 weeks is in the normal range. Also when a new queen starts laying it can be in quite small patches so can be difficult to spot. If you can get hold of a frame of BIAS and add it in you will see...

If you want something close to a Demaree but post-swarm cell prep you can put the queenless top box with as near as possible all the BIAS above a split board with a rear entrance The foragers will exit out the back entrance and reenter the lower box. You can remove the first batch of QC and...

Do you mean limited activity at the entrance to the nuc?- if so this is normal as the original foragers will have returned to the site of the original colony. Some of the younger bees then become foragers but this can take a while. If they had limited stores you may also need to feed them.

Easier to do with bruised sprigs of mint because the leaves are much larger. Also it wilts nicely over a day or so releasing the bees so you don't need to go back

Be careful with the next steps - to ensure good acceptance on transfer it is best to leave the mated queens in the Apidea for a while until they have fully developed their pheromones but at the same time they can sometimes abscond - I put the wee red queen excluder in over the entrance asap...

Fair enough but judging them when they are queenless is a different matter. I have had colonies that were lambs that become raging wolves after they have been split and then back to lambs again when queenright

Queenless hives are always more grouchy some extremely so. Once the virgins are mated they will likely calm down. You shouldn't really be going into them for the next 3 weeks so you can afford to wait and see

It will be around 3 weeks before your queens will be ready to go out and get mated and forecasts that far ahead are not reliable. However, the chances of getting a few decent days in the first 2 weeks of June are high so go for it.

Yes you could do that - it has the advantage of doubling your chances of getting a queen mated successfully - this can be a bit hit and miss at his time of year.

Colony losses are something I seldom saw when I had fewer colonies. Building up my treatment free colonies, losses are still low 5-15% - and these are due to "unfortunate" events such as isolation starvation or drone laying queens or queen loss and not varrosis or viruses. I have not seen any...

But then any bees that fly up during the transfer don't know where their home is?

Like Pargyle I have been treatment-free for many years and even those two or three years around a decade or so back I did treat it was only one or two of my colonies that seemed to have a high count (those lines have been discontinued..). I am now working towards providing over-wintered...

No it doesn't matter - you can help the returning foragers find the new upper entrance by leaning a board across where the lower entrance was so they land and walk upwards.

In other news, my top bar hive should arrive early next week. That will work out nicely - I predict swarms next weekend around about here!

I have used both Kieler and Apidea mini-nucs. No problem with strength for either. Kieler slightly larger but cheaper and has wooden top bars which are easier to clean and sterilise - the standard Apidea plastic frames warp in boiling washing soda though you can pay more for heat resistant...

New alloy divider is much better and means the system actally works smoothly

True - I think at the scale they work they don't bother - they just have a strong crew putting on supers as required

Here is a primer for you https://www.theapiarist.org/vertical-splits-making-increase/ MM uses a similar route to build up two colonies of bees on the same footprint (8 per pallet) and then recombines them for the heather flow