Charles > Singles,  for me without any hesitation is the way to go.  I come back from CA with doubles,  we make one split and an excluder and super up,  starting with 2 supers.



Charles, are you splitting the doubles 50/50 and requeening or are you taking a nuc out? 

50/50 split,  some brood on both sides and a mated queen.  I add a bit more brood to the side with the new queen with the expectation it will take here a week or better to get in the swing of things.



I did some of all the methods this year again,  in a more balanced trial.  Those we pulled just a nuc from were much more prone to swarming than the equal splits.  Not sure if that was a fluke or mismanagement, but I lost a lot of swarms this season from those hives.


On a side note I kept 40 out and did nothing but 50/50 splits (with mated queens) they got split almost 4 times (no honey to speak of) resulting in about 300 hives at this point.   I was curious as to how that would work.   All were given already drawn comb so they went a bit faster,  but no feed.


Charles

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