# Best Time to Split



## Planner (Apr 3, 2016)

I take my honey off the 2nd week of August. Is this a reasonable time to split the hives as I would like to introduce TF queens to the new NUCS.
Know by this time of year there will be high mite counts. If treatment for mites is required should they be treated before splitting? My goal is tooter winter NUCS.


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## kaizen (Mar 20, 2015)

2 months too late imo. choose honey or bees. I would take off what honey you have in a few weeks and treat. then split and give them any honey they bring in. probably also going to need to feed as well.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Kaizen. My thinking is that the bees produce honey. then supposedly go into a final brood production period in preparation for winter. I am also of the thinking that this period after honey production would be a time to split and allow the nucs to prep for winter. Now that is my thinking and I have found it often true that what I think the bees can do is not in fact what they do do. Such as queens are not capable of building a colony without a minimum number of bees. IF not from you I am still interested in hearing what actual experiences have been with after honey production build up of splits. do they simply get demoralized? I noticed this in my full size colonies last year when I believe we took to much honey to fast from them. they seemed to simply give up. Or, that after the flow rebuild is a may or may not happen sort of situation. Not sure. but I will say so far my experience with the bees building up after the flow is more of a wish than a reality. Thanks for any further comments you all have.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Mites are at highest levels in the late summer and fall, OAV to get mite counts low before you expect TF to take over and even at that it's going to take 2 + months to replace all the workers with TF workers. 

Splits in Aug are a little late in the season, are you expecting the nucs or original hives to draw wax? In late season the bees pack away stores from either a flow or fed, but don't make much new wax then they swarm because they ran out of room with undrawn frames. 

This area you want to have 10+ frame hives going into winter. Smaller 5 frame and less have a noticeable less winter survival. 

If you end up with a bunch of < 8 frame hives look up my thread "winter bees in the garage" I had 80-90% success with 2 - 8 frame hives.

You might try to do it sooner like beginning of July. Seems a lot of people harvest July 4 weekend.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

I find that any given colony of bees must have time to become a cohesive unit before winter. I also find that two small colonies combined into a 5 X 5 nuc do better than split colonies down to a 5x5 nuc. However a split in Ill. in august has ample time and the benefit of the autumn flow to become winter ready, more so than one in New Hampshire simply due to latitude.


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## kaizen (Mar 20, 2015)

Daniel Y said:


> Kaizen. My thinking is that the bees produce honey. then supposedly go into a final brood production period in preparation for winter. I am also of the thinking that this period after honey production would be a time to split and allow the nucs to prep for winter. Now that is my thinking and I have found it often true that what I think the bees can do is not in fact what they do do. Such as queens are not capable of building a colony without a minimum number of bees. IF not from you I am still interested in hearing what actual experiences have been with after honey production build up of splits. do they simply get demoralized? I noticed this in my full size colonies last year when I believe we took to much honey to fast from them. they seemed to simply give up. Or, that after the flow rebuild is a may or may not happen sort of situation. Not sure. but I will say so far my experience with the bees building up after the flow is more of a wish than a reality. Thanks for any further comments you all have.


If you had asked the original question I probably wouldn't have answered as I think your Nevada season is much different then mine. Illinois is closer to what I have.
In my region they have a buildup up to a certain point and depending on type of bee. The problem is after you split they are starting from close to zero. Add to that the brood break from the new queen not laying for a month and a late season nuc has a significant up hill battle. add to that maximum mite levels and it sounds like a disaster. so as I said I'd do it earlier and feed them for months. 
Not sure about your demoralized hive. Suppose if there is zero nectar sources they would not have much to do.


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## BigBlackBirds (Aug 26, 2011)

Planner said:


> I take my honey off the 2nd week of August. Is this a reasonable time to split the hives as I would like to introduce TF queens to the new NUCS.
> Know by this time of year there will be high mite counts. If treatment for mites is required should they be treated before splitting? My goal is tooter winter NUCS.


I'm curious how you intend to introduce TF queens? I could put together a nuc in August and be ok for winter in many instances if I used a mated queen, made a really strong single rather than a 2-3-4 frame nuc, hoped for a good fall flow or convinced myself to fed them. That would still give them enough time to make a cohesive unit by fall more often than not. Or you could try the 5 over 5 nuc option that seems pretty popular. Either way you might want to consider starting out with ample bees and resources if you are trying this in the fall.

If you are planning on using cells or virgin queens, I've never been much in favor of the plan for that time of year if the goal is for a production colony next year. Contrary to information that seems widely quoted these days, don't think I can ever recall a time that I've had good matings that late in the year. Matings yes, high quality matings no. In fact I have no interest in any queen mated in these parts after about the third week of July. I let a number of queens supercede around that time last fall. All of them made queens and survived the winter without any intervention from me. But I've killed everyone of those queerns this year as none are up to the quality that I'd ever keep around. However, if you are just trying to get a specific treatment free stock to spring so that you can use them as a drone source for next years matings you probably can do it with virgins/cells if you baby them along.


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