# Aggressive splitting? Need to increase hive numbers fast. How?



## westernbeekeeper (May 2, 2012)

Hello all,
If I am starting with 10 hives (single deep), and I want to get as many hives as possible by splitting, what is the best way to go about it? Single deep vs. double, specific feeding regimen, other? Please help. Thanks!


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## Ben Franklin (May 3, 2011)

I would take a frame of brood, make sure there are eggs in it not just larva. A frame of honey, and some drawn frames. I would do it in a Nuc 3,4, or 5 frames. Then unless your in a period of no nectar I would feed 1-2 syrup. Now leave it alone.
I would not do all the hives at one time.


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## dfortune (Aug 10, 2012)

Buying mated queens is the key. Divide each colony giving 2 frames of brood to each queen and another shake of bees per new hive unless your going to move them over 2 miles. And make sure they all get enough honey. Feeding light syrup and pollen patties cant hurt. One way to get the queen to lay more is every couple of weeks put a frame or two of drawn comb inbetween frames of brood. Once these hives get a cycle or two of bees hatched out you can repeat. Being as far north as you are it would be wise to give them plenty of time grow before winter.


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## westernbeekeeper (May 2, 2012)

Thank for the replies, guys. So I am hearing this: make 3 or 4-frame splits, as early as practically possible? I would like to split as many time as possible. My hives are in single deeps right now; are they okay there, or should I convert to doubles?


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Do you have spare drawn comb?


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## westernbeekeeper (May 2, 2012)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> Do you have spare drawn comb?


No, I used it all for packages this spring.


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## mmiller (Jun 17, 2010)

How many frames of brood do these single deeps have? That is the biggest factor to aggressive splitting in my opininion. Having no drawn comb is a little bit of a set back but not a deal breaker. 
Are you wanting to winter nucs? If so, then you can make quite a few nucs over the course of a season with 10 hives. Since you don't have comb I would make the splits into nuc boxes with 3 frames of comb with brood and 2 frames of foundation on the outsides with the brood in the middle. I would feed to help them draw those 2 new combs. When this nuc fills up you can split the nuc equally between 2 nucs (multiple times through the summer) or you can let it build into a single deep and during summer break it into nucs for wintering. You can end up with alot of nucs doing this. 
I like using nucs because I can use them to boost other colonies and I end up with many queens which gives me a lot of flixibilty. They also seem to build comb really well. 

Mike


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

I don't run singles, so I don't have a lot of experience with them, but hives seem to hit their stride when they get to doubles. What I would do is:

Get my hives to doubles this year (you might be able to get some nucs off of them this year also) and feed both pollen and sugar into the fall and early next spring. This fall I would order mated queens on a three week spacing starting next spring when your hives normally would have 4-6 frames of brood. One queen for each hive that I expect to be thriving next spring. Then next spring I would start taking two frames of capped brood and extra bees every three weeks to make nucs.

I've never done this on an on-going basis, but I think that two frames of brood/bees and another shake of bees every three weeks would let the new hives take off and not deplete the originals too much that they can't replenish their dying bees and get enough brood for the next order of queens. Then next summer you could split your doubles into as many hives as you thought was wise. By that I mean that I don't know what over winters where you are. If you want everything to at least singles, then you may need to use resources from your big hives to boost the last nucs that you made. If the last nucs can get big enough without help then make summer splits from your large hives. If you need doubles to get through the winter, then you will not be able to get as many splits done.

You will need to feed most of the time except possibly when your flow is on. I'm pretty sure that this work work where I live, but you will need to know what you can over winter. If you go too small and lose a bunch over the next winter, your gamble won't have paid off.


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## keeper (Jan 29, 2012)

see link

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/method1.html


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## DonShackelford (Jan 17, 2012)

I've been making splits for increase this year as well. I started feeding syrup, but since there is so much available now they really seem to have no interest in it. I made up too much, and now have 10 buckets of syrup sitting around.


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## westernbeekeeper (May 2, 2012)

mmiller said:


> How many frames of brood do these single deeps have?


6-8


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## Moon (May 7, 2011)

How many hives do you have and how many are you trying to get to? I just made up 30 nucs a week ago and after the queens begin to lay in those I'm going to try and make up another 70. Each nuc gets one frame of brood, one frame of honey and an empty frame to draw on plus a grafted queen cell. By the end of the summer I'll hope to have everything moved into a single deep (by say September) at which point I'll start feeding pollen sub & sugar syrup until probably end of October to help them put on weight before winter sets in.


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## DonShackelford (Jan 17, 2012)

Curious about your intention to make midsummer splits with one frame of brood and expecting them to overwinter.
Is this something you have tried before? If so, hats off for such an increase. If not, I'd advise caution before possible losing all trying to go too fast.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Ben, are you giving them mated/virgin queens or are they making their own? For a laying queen I've found two frame splits ok. For virgins, two frames works ok, if it's all capped brood, 3 frames better in case something goes amiss.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

If you are willing to buy queens then make up as many nucs as you can with a couple of frames of brood a frame of brood a shake of bees and a store bought queen. just add foundation and syrup and let them grow. 

if you don't want to buy queens then to produce good queen cells and thus good queens you need strong hives with lots of bees. Queen cells can be placed in small nucs to emerge and mate - no problem. Everything else is just basic bee keeping - keeping everything healthy and well fed.

If you split the queen from a strong hive into a weak nuc the strong hive will usually produce multiple frames with decent cells on them. Those can be split into individual nucs (mating nucs) to emerge into and be mated. Once the mating nucs are queenright they get strong pretty fast, then you can take the queens out of them and they can often do a good job making their own queen. 

This would be aggressive increase by splitting. But what are you hoping to accomplish?


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## Moon (May 7, 2011)

DonShackelford said:


> Curious about your intention to make midsummer splits with one frame of brood and expecting them to overwinter.
> Is this something you have tried before? If so, hats off for such an increase. If not, I'd advise caution before possible losing all trying to go too fast.


Summer doesn't start for another two weeks so if it's done in the next 2 weeks it would still be considered an early summer split yeah, and if done with ample feed throughout the dearths with syrup and pollen sub into early/late fall I would think the bees would build up enough, or am I off base on this? I know I did a bunch of mid summer splits last year (end of July I think I may have grafted August 1st) and I had 100% mortality on all of those colonies. This year the last graft I'm going to do is going to be mid July; however, I didn't feed any of those nucs either so hopefully that remedies the problem. I also didn't wrap the colonies or stack them on top of full size colonies to aid in the overwintering, I basically just left them sitting out in the middle of the fields on the ground so they didn't have much of a fighting chance. Different tact for this year.


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