>
> >The operation is easier with frames: the bulk of the bees, the queen, and
> half the brood can be placed in the split, in order to “hold” the bees to
> the new hive. The remaining hive gets half the brood, most of the flying
> bees, and enough nurses to care for the brood.
>

I find that a slight tweak to the above works well for us, plus allows for
nearly complete varroa kill in the two parts, as illustrated by the
attached graphic from a recent article of mine in ABJ.

All the foragers (roughly a quarter of the adult bees) will return of their
own accord to the parent stand, plus the queen will already be in full
egglaying mode, so this colony can quickly recover its population.   So the
only frames of brood (with adhering nurse bees) that I leave her are those
with unsealed brood only.  We often leave her to pick up the drift from
several nuked up hives, in which case that parent hive will rebound very
quickly.

The split (unless you introduce a mated queen) won't have an egglaying
queen for around 12 days (if you put in a ripe queen cell), or around 24
days (if you force the bees to rear an emergency queen).  So I give them
all the sealed brood and most of the remaining workers from the parent
hive.  Treat the parent split with OA immediately, and the moved split on
Day 19.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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