# Is it advisable to split a hive early in the nectar flow?



## roberto487 (Sep 22, 2012)

1- Is it advisable to split during the early state of the nectar flow?

2- Would you requeen a hive that is hot but the queen is prolific, healthy, over winters well and hygienic?



My friend has a hive that over wintered very well, despite the cold winter we had in Northwest NJ. It seems like the queen kept laying through the winter, because when the weather broke in March, the hive was bursting at the seams with bees. Actually, there were little dead bees. I have never seen anything like this. By the way, this hive seems a little hotter and seems to be hygienic. Anyway, we inspected the hive last Saturday and we noticed two swam cells on the bottom of the upper brood box, but there are tons of bees. One queen cell was capped and the other open with lots of royal jelly. About two pounds of bees were hanging off the interior of the inner cover and many inside the dried feeder. The brood boxes were full of bees and lots of brood. We plan to split it this Saturday. One more thing, we did not find the queen and I wondering if she already swarmed and left tons of bees behind with two additional queens. 
Please advise.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Sounds more like a supercedure to me, and where are your honey supers? All those bees should be busy packing away honey! 

This would be a great time to split, move one of the frames with queen cells to another box with half the rest of the hive and bees and leave one in the original hive. MOVE THEM CAREFULLY! If you bang the frame with the immature queen in it, you can damage her and end up with a queenless hive.

We are more than half way through our main flow here, if you want honey super than hive up and forget about splitting. Also check for the brood nest being full of nectar or honey, this is a dead giveaway that they are on the way out the door. Also locate the queen, you can use her for a split and leave the queen cells if she's still there.

As for re-queening a hot hive, if the bees are a real problem, sure, go ahead. If they are only hot when the weather is bad, or there is evidence of robbing, overcrowding, or skunks bothering the hive, fix the problem and leave them alone.

Peter


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## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

If you found only two queen cells, they are probably supercedure cells. Usually there are tons of swarm cells and the swarm usually leaves right before they are capped or soon thereafter. 
If you split before the flow, they will have something to build on--brood and comb.
How hot is "hot"? Sounds like the good qualities outweigh a little hotness. I have one hive the gives me a few stings every visit if I'm not careful. The brood pattern is wall to wall, top to bottom and they produce lots of honey too, I can stand a few stings for those good characteristics. My hives are usually hotter when they are queenless but it usually disappears after the virgins start laying.


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## Mr.Beeman (May 19, 2012)

The hive will split itself if you don't do it soon sounds like. I'd split it now.
A swarm queen will take up to 2/3 of the hive on the initial swarm. Maybe you just missed her in the hive. With that many bees it's easy to miss her.
I'd let the hive queen remain and see how it pans out.


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

Colonies often supersede in early main flow if they do not meet the swarm prep requirements. We do not typically see this SS because we are supering at that part of the season, and are not going down to the broodnest.
They would rather requeen annually by swarming, but failing that, some requeen by SS.

Walt


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Roberto, i split all my hives about 20-30 days before the honey flow. that gives them time to build up and gear up for honey flow, the bees also have a different mentality, where i think queens succed better. i had 11 hives and i split 9, so now i have 20. out of the 9, i only have 1 problem hive, where the queen did not made it. probably bad weather and she could not get mated right. i had to kill her, stold 3 frames of brood from the others, including bees and surprise, Q cells from one of the hive that was to weak to split back then. i put all of that in there, and now i am hoping this crazy weather that we had here will not stop her from mating again. i usually get 100% on the mating, but this year, rains and storms might have gotten the better of my statistics )
now, to be honest with you, i am gearing up for another split in about 10 days. i want to go up to 30 hives. so i will split all i can next weekend, if it does not rain..or the weekend after. whenever the weather lets me, i will cut them down ) i will start some queens this weekend, because that only takes a couple of hours to set up. after that, i hope to have all it takes for nuc making in about 10 -15 days. 

i would not look for the queen if i was you. i would look for EGGS. straight in the cell eggs. that means les than 12h.  find the EGGS and you will know she is there somewhere. for beginer beekeepers, it is hard to find her in the sea of bees, it takes a while to form the reflex to find her. there is a method on how to find them, but it will take me a few pages to explain if you are eve in Louisiana, come see me and i will demonstrate  

just take your hive, split it, make sure both sides have bees, and eggs and if possible Q cell. after that, give them a second box, and if you are on a flow, leave them bee for about 1 week. go and check after 1 week. if one has queen cells and no eggs, and the other has q cells and eggs, that means they are trying to get ridd of the old queen. i would save her by taking 1 frame of capped brood, 1 frame of honey and an empty frame, and the old queen and set it up as a individual hive. thet should stop their will to kill her. if there are no Q cells, then you know she is there and the "swarming feever" has passed. i usually do that with old queens you know.
i take her and set her up in a 5 frame nuc, and then split the hive up, and heve them start with a fresh queen. if one does not work, i take the old queen, an place it back. a lot of people i used to work with killed those old queens. i can remember one episode where the guys replaced 1000 queens. it took us 4 dfays to find and kill every queen he had in there. he wanted to change his whole genetics with mated queens. i can tell you tears were shed by some guys in the crew, including this one. it can't not afect your hart killing so many queens. we asked him to reconsider, but he would not hear reason. i probably saved 5 for myself, but the rest got waisted. 

sorry for the long post, friday afternoon at the office...booooring


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