# Splitting a bee hive.



## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

The time has came and gone for some of you. Here in Michigan the time is approching when we will start ours.

Splitting a bee hive
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There many ways to split a bee hive, maybe as many as there are bee keepers.
Here is how we do it with a boughten queen.
Search the top box of a double deep hive to make sure the queen isn&#8217;t there, and to make sure some brood pollen and honey are there. Set them off to the side.
We set a double screen board on top of the bottom hive, it also has the entrance to the top box, which faces 180 degrees to the bottom mother hive entrance.










I then set the second deep on top of the first one. Remove one frame, spread a couple out a bit. I then install the queen cage between the two spread out frames and push them together.



















We then close it up for 4 days. Once the queen is released, laying a good pattern and the night temps are over 45F we remove the top box.










Double screen sizes. 









 Al

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## reginabee (May 15, 2008)

Easy as pie!


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Easier than pie.

You can also use a cloak board for about 21 days to do a split and raise a queen.

 Al


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Time to get this one to the top also.

Tom I sure miss honey bees only, do you?

 Al


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## tom j (Apr 3, 2009)

yes I do miss it , as nice as the other sites are , honey bees only, did have them all beat ,, it was a smaller but more personnel , more like a employee owned , the big ones are like the big box stores ,, your just a name


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## Farmerwilly2 (Oct 14, 2006)

I'll give this a try. I'm guessing that board has two layers of screen to keep them separated? Gonna be nice here the next two weeks, have started feeding out patties, they still had plenty of honey. Any other tips?


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Yes two peices of 1/8th" hard wear cloth.

 Al


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## tom j (Apr 3, 2009)

I will have to get the grandkid to make me a few . I'm going to give them a try this year .. theres a few things I want to give a try this year ,IF the weather cooperates , last year it rained so much . when I was home and had time it rained ,, when I was gone , the sun was out ,


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## Farmerwilly2 (Oct 14, 2006)

Thank you. I should have some of the 1/8 left from the bottom boards and feeders I made last year. How big of a space?


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## OkieDavid (Jan 15, 2007)

Had to split one over the weekend. First exam of the year on dad's hive and it was overflowing with EIGHT frames of capped brood. Had open queen swarm cells on two frames and drones so just made an even split with both queen cells and a couple of frames of brood going into new hive (with new foundation making up the remaining frames) and the old queen and new foundation making up the other hive. Have to keep an eye on them but I "hope" by catching the queen cells open we got to it in time to prevent a swarm.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Has been my experience they will more than likely still swarm as they had that on their minds to start with.

With want you described I have had better luck making a swarm, an artifical swarm by removing the queen and a passle of bees leaving the queen cells and another passel of bees in the orginal hive.

 Al


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## OkieDavid (Jan 15, 2007)

Yes Al, that's what I figured. We moved the old queen and couple of frames to the new hive and left the queen cells in the old to try to mimic an early swarm (since the queen cells were not capped).


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Sorry I missed the space question. The screens are a 1 1/2 apart.

 Al


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