# Adding bees to a split



## Owens913 (9 mo ago)

I'm a new Beek and I got a nuc March 26th, i added another deep brood box April 5th cause they drawnnout 80% of the frames in that deep. However I begin seeing swarming cells(they weren't at the bottom like they should be but there were alot of them more than 5) by April 17th so on April 20th I spilt my bee hive taking my new queen and 3 frames..2 brood..1 nectar and put it in the nuc box I had with 2 empty frames.. I didn't really know exactly what I was doing and did not shake more bees into the nuc..however the frames I put in did have alot of bees on them. I believe they were mostly nursing bees because at there are none guarding the entrance. But I'm starting to see a couple come and go forge.. I gave them sugar syrup and a small piece of pollen patty. My question is is it too late to add bees from the original colony to this hive..I did an inspection 2 days ago and the new queen. Had not hatched yet. Ima add some pics as well.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

For a new beek, you have done your homework. You recognized a prime splitting opportunity and took it. 

To answer your question, no, it is not too late to shake in more bees to the new split. However, all of the forager bees will fly back to the original hive. Only the nurse bees will stay. Therefore, you should shake in bees from a frame of open brood in the original hive. There should be a higher ratio of nurse bees on this frame. 

A second option is to switch places with the hives. Move the new split to the original hive's location and the original hive to the location of the new split. This will cause a lot of foragers to migrate to the new hive. 

Keep an eye on that original hive though. If they were in the "mindset" to swarm, they will often continue to keep trying. 

Good luck and welcome to Beesource.


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## Fivej (Apr 4, 2016)

Welcome to beekeeping and the forum Owens. Your question is general so it doesn't matter this time but you should put your location in your profile. Many times people need to know location to give good advice.
If the nurse bees are covering the brood, you have enough bees for now. If not, you can simply take a frame or two from original hive that contains brood and give it a sharp shake into the nuc. The foragers will likely return to the original hive, but the nurse bees will stay. Be cautious about taking too many bees from your original hive so as not to weaken it. Two weak hives are a lot worse than one strong and one weak. 
If the nurse bees are covering the existing brood, I would probably hold off a bit. Your queen in waiting still has to develop, hatch, successfully mate and start laying. This takes about a month from the time the egg has laid. In the meantime, no new eggs are being laid and your brood is hatching and developing from house bee to forager. Once your new queen gets up and running, foragers can revert back to nurse bees, but you can also add nurse bees from your other hive so you have a well balanced age group and more foragers. 
When you have a new laying queen, her pheromones will be different than original hive so if you shake bees into it from another hive, the older forager bees may fight. Sometimes, you can get away with it. A neat way to avoid the possibility of fighting is to pull the frames of brood you want to shake nurse bees off of, shake all bees back into hive and put them in a box over a queen excluder for a few hours. The nurse bees will have moved up to cover the brood. Shake them into the nuc, put frames back in original hive.
You are off to a good start. Have fun!


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## Owens913 (9 mo ago)

So even if the original hive will have a new queen soon and more space they may still swarm? That sucks..I'm trying to understand how I would swap hives when it's only enough for 10 frames in the nuc hive. I have an empty nuc on top of the one with 5.frames..and in the original.hive there are 20 frames..maybe I'm too tired to think right now..I'll ponder on this later.


Fivej said:


> Welcome to beekeeping and the forum Owens. Your question is general so it doesn't matter this time but you should put your location in your profile. Many times people need to know location to give good advice.
> If the nurse bees are covering the brood, you have enough bees for now. If not, you can simply take a frame or two from original hive that contains brood and give it a sharp shake into the nuc. The foragers will likely return to the original hive, but the nurse bees will stay. Be cautious about taking too many bees from your original hive so as not to weaken it. Two weak hives are a lot worse than one strong and one weak.
> If the nurse bees are covering the existing brood, I would probably hold off a bit. Your queen in waiting still has to develop, hatch, successfully mate and start laying. This takes about a month from the time the egg has laid. In the meantime, no new eggs are being laid and your brood is hatching and developing from house bee to forager. Once your new queen gets up and running, foragers can revert back to nurse bees, but you can also add nurse bees from your other hive so you have a well balanced age group and more foragers.
> When you have a new laying queen, her pheromones will be different than original hive so if you shake bees into it from another hive, the older forager bees may fight. Sometimes, you can get away with it. A neat way to avoid the possibility of fighting is to pull the frames of brood you want to shake nurse bees off of, shake all bees back into hive and put them in a box over a queen excluder for a few hours. The nurse bees will have moved up to cover the brood. Shake them into the nuc, put frames back in original hive.
> You are off to a good start. Have fun!


I checked under profile..I don't see where I can add my location


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I think you are correct, if you swapped the hives then you'd need to add a box of frames to the smaller split so it could accommodate the large work force of bees it would inherit from the swap.


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## Fivej (Apr 4, 2016)

Both of your hives are unlikely to swarm this year now that you did a split. Adding location: 








Why the populating the "Location" field is...


To get the "most relevant" responses to your posts, it is important for each member (new members - new beekeepers - prospective beekeepers in particular) to edit your profile to include your "Location". Here is a link to your profile page where "Location" can be found/added...




www.beesource.com


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## Owens913 (9 mo ago)

Fivej said:


> Both of your hives are unlikely to swarm this year now that you did a split. Adding location:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks I added it


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## Owens913 (9 mo ago)

I put the hive with my old queen that was in a nuc into a 10 frame hive..the old hive still doesn't seem to have a hatched queen but perhaps any day now..I also couldn't find my old queen on those 3 frames which is weird I'm hoping she's not gone


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