# How to prevent a swarm from a split



## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

my opinion
if you do a walk away split the foragers IE the oriented bees go back the the old stand.
I ALWAYS add space to the old stand to make it close to the original size.

In the case where you do a walk away and the old queen is on the old stand, the bees come back it is crowded and they swarm.

I in general do not do a standard walk away.
here is my flow
pull the old queen and 5 frames of bees taking or adding 1 full frame of stores, take this to a new location.
in the old hive wait 8 days till cells are capped, of more than 10 as some could be hatching. verify no queen cells when pulling the old queen, if present then time table changes.
resplit the old hive into 2 or 3 small ish 5-7 frame splits. leave less bees at the old stand as some will come back.

so I walk the queen away, then split the remainder, depending on strength, pre them swarming.

GG


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

+1 to Gray Goose.

It also gives you a better chance of getting mated queens. If you only do one split you only have one 80% chance of getting a mated queen out of it. If you do 2-4 splits then you're nearly guaranteed to get a good queen. Any that fail you can combine back to the others.

The smaller sized splits also aren't going to swarm on you.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

mtnmyke said:


> +1 to Gray Goose.
> 
> It also gives you a better chance of getting mated queens. If you only do one split you only have one 80% chance of getting a mated queen out of it. If you do 2-4 splits then you're nearly guaranteed to get a good queen. Any that fail you can combine back to the others.
> 
> The smaller sized splits also aren't going to swarm on you.


Ranger
been there so I can relate.

agree with Mike not every split makes a good /great Queen, and if one swarms it is a smaller loss.
then keep the good ones and combine the poor/queen less ones to where you want / need more strength.

keep trying slight deviations till the outcome in more what you want, there are many ways to split.

GG


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