Split a hive two or three way

[whizzwheels]

I was wondering what people thought about getting two new queens and then splitting an existing hive into three, so a third has the existing queen with some brood, stores, eggs, etc. Then each new queen has a remaining third each.

The hive I'm thinking of splitting is building up very nicely has a brood and a half at present of which nearly half the frames have eggs, etc in them when I looked last week and two honey supers on of which one is nearly full.

Would splitting it three ways weaken it too much that it would reduce the chances of it surviving winter as it would not be able to built up in time?

 

[greatbritishhoney]

I'm maybe not the best person to answer this but I reckon if you are going to do a three way split then now is the time to do it. There is plenty of time left for them to build up into decent colonies.
But, why not wait till they start producing queen cells and do a split using those? Cheaper than buying queens. That is unless you don't want to breed from your current stock.

 

[rae]

Yup, they'll probably want to swarm soon, and you can do an AS (with split) - then not combine.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Two frames of brood and one of stores and two frames of foundation in a nuc should build up to a good sized colony by the end of the year.
My personal view would be to use my own queens - and you may have the opportunity for that yourself! Local 'Cheshire' bees would be better than imported IMO if you did chose to buy in.

 

[whizzwheels]

I already have two queens on order for delivery middle of next month (ordered earlier this year) as the current queen was very bad tempered at the end of last year. So the idea was to split in two with a new queen on each.
However when I inspected them last week (and everytime this year) they are very very clam, in fact a reckon I could of got away with no bee suite, gloves, etc last week as they seemed to carry on as if I wasn't there.
So hence the question as I now want to split three ways, as I want to keep this original queen.
The other idea I've had is to buy another full hive and split that as well as my original hive so I will get 4 nucs from two good strong hive.