Dividing strong colonies in the spring is an excellent way to increase the size of your operation, make up for winter losses, and prevent swarming. Each new colony is made by taking four to six frames of sealed brood and two frames of honey and placing them with adhering bees in the center of the new hive. Introduce a new queen or queen cell and add sheets of foundation or drawn combs to fill up the hive body. The hive may be placed near the parent colony, but it is better to move it to another location at least 2 miles away to prevent bees from returning to the original colony.

Leaving the entrance to the new hive open only 1 inch wide will help prevent robbing. Feed the new colony from time to time with sugar syrup or combs of honey. If provided with plenty of bees and food, the new colony will be strong enough to store some surplus honey by fall. The parent colony from which the increase was made is less likely to swarm and should eventually produce as much honey as it would have without being split.

Another way to split colonies is to take brood, bees, and combs from several colonies. Less fighting will occur, however, if all bees are from the same colony. Colonies also may be divided within the same hive with a double screen. Place the old queen with about half the combs of brood, mostly unsealed if possible, in the bottom brood chamber. If more food is needed, add an extra hive body with empty combs or combs with honey. Put the double screen on top of the second hive body with the entrance facing to the rear of the hive. Above it put the second brood chamber containing five to six frames of brood, mostly sealed, and two combs of pollen and honey on each side. The upper portion of the split should contain about two-thirds of the bees. This will require you to shake extra bees into the upper portion from the combs of the bottom hive body, because field bees will return to the lower portion when they go on a foraging trip. The new split will be composed of young bees only. An insufficient number of bees in the upper portion will not be able to keep the brood combs warm. As previously described, the upper unit should receive a new queen or queen cell when it is made up.