# Can I split now?



## BeeRanger (May 21, 2015)

Hello fellow beekeepers.

I did the impossible - both of my hives survive the winter. Although the one hive came out queenless, but I took care of that by putting 2 frames of brood in with it to make a queen. Anyway, my one hive is doing great composed of 2 deeps 

and 1 medium with a laying queen and plenty of workers. I plan on splitting the one deep into 2, 5-frame nucs, but I not sure when and how many splits I should actually do. Does this sound like a reasonable split? Also, 

with temperatures going to be in the 40s and potentially high 30s this coming week, will the bees (splits) do alright considering their size?


Thanks in advance.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Do you have lots of drone brood in your hives? If not I'd wait for that cue. Even though the drones in your hives won't mate with your own bees, you will be depending on drones from other nearby hives to do that. And if you have lots of emerged drones in your hives, then so do other hives in the neighborhood.

Splitting before there is a great surplus of drones around is to risk that your new queens will be poorly mated and may not be good for the long run.

Of course, if you were planning on using already-mated new queens in your splits, then knock yourself out.

The hive that you placed the brood frame in to make a new queen will have the same issue. But at least it will keep those bees busy, and hopeful, for awhile longer, and you can repeat that later, if needed. The cure for an early-detected queenless hive is usually a purchased mated queen, or combining those bees with a QR hive and then re--splitting them again once queen-making chances improve. Combining the bees will add to the swarm pressures, so stay on top of that.

Enj.

Enj.


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## BeeRanger (May 21, 2015)

enjambres said:


> Do you have lots of drone brood in your hives? If not I'd wait for that cue. Even though the drones in your hives won't mate with your own bees, you will be depending on drones from other nearby hives to do that. And if you have lots of emerged drones in your hives, then so do other hives in the neighborhood.


 When I inspected this one hive about a week ago, it was loaded with drone brood. Which should have emerged by now, so I don't think there will be a shortage of drones anytime soon.  I'm afraid the hive will split without me if I'm not careful, since there's a flow that is about ready to start (or already has). So I guess I have no other choice. I would love to buy a queen, but I don't think they're available in my area yet. I'll just have to stick to making my own queens (which I want since I have Carniolans).

Thanks for the info. It was very helpful.


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## phyber (Apr 14, 2015)

I am just a bit south of you and have already done two splits. Queens have emerged from their cells and I'm waiting on signs that their mating flights were successful.

I split once I saw capped drone brood in good amounts... I had already seen drone brood in the hives since late February but there wasn't enough new brood build up in the parent hives to support a split, so I waited until temps warmed up a bit.

I used the walk away split method, leaving the parent queen in the parent hive. This is not usually how people do it, but I prefer to look for a new queen in a 5 frame nuc vs. two 10 frame deeps.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

If you have plenty of drones you can split. If you should or not is a judgement call based on a lot of factors.


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