# Is July to late to split a hive??



## jooky

sounds like you have no choice. split them. its going to happen. heavily feed them so they have plenty of stores for the winter


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## msl

if the cells are capped its likely the queen is gone, if she is not put her in a nuc 

if she is gone
option one- make up as many nucs as you can, feed and over winter
option two- Make a nuc with a cell or 2 and thin the cells the main hive down to 2-3. This gives you a back up if the new queen in OG hive fails


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## Goldycon

I had a hive about to swarm so I split it after getting advice here and the queen stayed in the split. The original hive never raised a queen so after a few weeks I was able to combine the two hives back into one hive and everything has been good since. 

I wonder if you can split a hive and just kill all the queen cells in the original one to make them queen less then introduce the queen back to the colony. I'm a noob so I don't actually know but I'm sure someone will.


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## jig4bass

Thanks guys the queen was still there as of last night so if she is still there tonight I'll split and feed worth a try


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## DanielD

One thing to consider, a single deep half full of bees is already only a nuc. Are they out of room for the queen to lay? Is the brood nest being back filled? If it's only half a deep yet, I would guess I don't want the queen and there could also be a supersedure instead of a swarm. If the cells are on the bottom of the frames, it isn't absolute that it's a swarm. Supersedure usually has only a few cells, swarm has a good amount. I would probably take away the queen and one frame of brood, maybe some more nurse bees and drawn comb if there was some, to have a queen banked, then tear down all but two cells. Let them make a better queen, and combine the bees with it later. Keeping the queen banked with continue to produce some brood for further buildup while you wait for a new queen. Swarm or supersedure, that would work either way. You could also buy a mated queen and tear down the cells for more time before winter.


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## msl

if she is still there the next question is how many cells do you have? 
Are you sure its swarm prep not supersedure?


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## jig4bass

Well there are 2cells on the bottom of one frame and a 1 cell on another frame, now I'm wondering I just assumed swarm cells where they are on the bottom of frames , there is a box and a half of bees to clarify so they weren't congested but there was no brood above the 1st box only 4 frames of partial honey. Now I'm not sure what to do??


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## jwcarlson

Sounds more like supercedure.

I wouldn't necessarily let that stop me from splitting so long as they have enough bees. Leave the two cells on one frame in one side and the one cell in the other side. I'm all for giving yourself two chances at getting a mated queen back with the side benefit of possibly having two viable nucs.


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## DanielD

That sound better jig, 1 1/2 deeps. I didn't read it too well I think. Much better position to be in. They seem to want the queen gone, so jw's suggestion of attempting to gain 2 more queens would be good. You can combine later if the original queen isn't too good. I would let it lay in another split till the others are good to go.


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