# Keep queen from laying for mini brood break?



## snispel (Feb 10, 2020)

I have a hive with a deep box of brood and 3 medium boxes of honey. I want to do a brood break split, but I really like my queen, so I want to keep her. I read somewhere that you can take the queen and put her in a nuc with no room to lay and that creates a mini brood break. Then I would let the rest of the hive make a new queen from her eggs and come out with two hives and a brood break for both.

But, I can't find that post and can't remember what I put in the nuc with the queen. All honey? Honey and young brood? Honey and undrawn frames? 

Thank you for the input.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Several ways to do this. One frame of open brood will help keep the bees from absconding. You then remove that frame after it has been capped to help remove most of the mites, which will all be trying to get into a brood cell before capping. Add a frame full of honey and one of pollen is the usual advice, and two empty frames. The queen will have no place to lay for a while which extends the broodless period.

The queenless hive will get a nice, long, brood break while they make a new queen. When they have capped queen cells you can then split it into multiple nucs if you want further expansion. 

I did this last year with great success. I had my first really successful winter last year. In past years I had treated with Apivar. That worked in my better bees but didn't help at all with the more mite-susceptible bees. Maybe nothing would have, or maybe I was just so new and inexperienced that I did enough things wrong that the Apivar wasn't enough.

I suggest adding your location to your profile, so that local beekeepers can advise you on details like timing, feeding, wintering, which vary according to climate.


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## snispel (Feb 10, 2020)

AR1 said:


> Several ways to do this. One frame of open brood will help keep the bees from absconding. You then remove that frame after it has been capped to help remove most of the mites, which will all be trying to get into a brood cell before capping. Add a frame full of honey and one of pollen is the usual advice, and two empty frames. The queen will have no place to lay for a while which extends the broodless period.
> 
> The queenless hive will get a nice, long, brood break while they make a new queen. When they have capped queen cells you can then split it into multiple nucs if you want further expansion.
> I suggest adding your location to your profile, so that local beekeepers can advise you on details like timing, feeding, wintering, which vary according to climate.


Thank you! I am in SE Nebraska near Lincoln. We still seem to have quite a few things in flower. They are building a medium 8 frame of honey a week right now.


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## Sickdog5 (Jun 8, 2016)

i just did one the other day. Took the queen out of the hive with a frame of brood and honey. Really like AR1 idea of making multiple nuc's out of the queen cells mite do that. But if the parent hive doesn't have a successfully mated queen in 21 days. I will re introduce the old queen. AR1 is it getting to late in your area to be making brand new splits?


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