Splitting a Hive

[Shutler]

Hi everyone, I’m planning to split one of my hives and want to make sure my approach is solid. If anyone has additional advice or tweaks, I’d really appreciate it!

My plan is to take Hive A (the original hive) and create Hive B (the new hive) in a separate location ( about 5m away). I’ll move four frames of brood (containing eggs, larvae, and capped brood) from Hive A into Hive B, replacing them with new frames. To ensure Hive B has enough young bees, I’ll shake in extra nurse bees.

To manage the transition, I plan to stack Hive B above Hive A for 24 hours, separated by a double screen board (or a queen excluder and super). After this queenless period, I’ll move Hive B to its final location and introduce a caged, mated queen, allowing the bees to release her over several days.

Ill then monitor both hives to ensure Hive A remains queenright and that Hive B successfully accepts the new queen while keeping an eye out for emergency queen cells in Hive B, and ensure both colonies have enough food stores to thrive.

Set up Hive B ~5m away from Hive A.
Move brood frames – Transfer 4 frames (with eggs, larvae, and capped brood) from Hive A to Hive B, replacing them with fresh frames.
Add extra bees – Shake in nurse bees to support Hive B.
Leave for 24 hours – Stack Hive B above Hive A, separated by a double screen board (or queen excluder and super).
Move Hive B to its stand – Relocate it after 24 hours.
Introduce a mated queen – Allow the bees to release her over 3–5 days.
Check after a week – Ensure she is accepted and laying.

Would love to hear from anyone who has done similar splits—does this sound like a solid plan?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

sounds far too complicated to be honest.
you have one thing right, make sure the hive is strong and on at least eight frames of brood. If you have a spare 5 or six frame nuc, I'd use that, forget about faffing around with screens and stacking the colonies. Once you are ready to 'split' have your new queen, attendants in cage, in your pocket, open your donor hive, ensure you know where that queen is then transfer three (or four if you must) frames of brood, as near emerging as possible with covering nurse bees into the nuc,, make up the rest of the nuc with a frame of stores, a frame of drawn comb and whatever else instead of the frame of stores, you could put on a feeder with a few pints of syrup in.
Add the new queen, in cage, with the candy plug still covered, Shake in a good couple of bees into the nuc and close up. Move the nuc to its intended position, loosely plugging the entrance on opening.
Wait overnight, go in and break the tab on the candy, having a quick look to see if they have built any emergency QCs (I've never discovered this) close up and leave them to it.