>I wish to use my own cells for spring splits this year. I can raise good
>cells, I will have drones
>available. However living in Minnesota time for buildup is short. I need
>to produce honey
>on these colonies. Have any of you northern beemen had experience  with this?
>I will appreciate any advice you can give me.
>
>Thanks Gary Oberton
 
I've had excellent queens reared by making strong nucs (4+ combs heavy with
capped brood and bees and provided with plenty of food, eggs present) and
placing them in deep hive bodies over strong colonies, screen board
between.   (Watch for swarm cells - you can use them for the nucs or remove
them.)  The lower colony keeps the upper nice and warm, and they have a
small (1-2") upper entrance.  If they make lots of cells sometimes I'll
split the nucs further once the q cells are capped.  Anyway, the point of
this was originally to keep the parent colonies from swarming, taking 2-4
frames of capped brood and some bees away and replacing them with drawn
combs.  Combs from different hives can be combined to make the new splits
strong.  This has worked well, and the parent colonies seem to make honey
like they never lost anything.
 
Its amazing how fast the upper "nuc" will explode in population once all
that capped brood starts emerging.  About 10 days after making them up,
they can be moved to new stands, as the new queens will be getting ready to
emerge.  If you make up the nucs with already developing cells, you might
want to wait til you see that the new q is laying already.  Then move them.
The field bees reinforce the lower colony and aren't lost.
 
These new colonies with young queens will collect excellent late
summer/fall crops.  If your main flow is earlier, you can try making these
splits in late April instead of May, when I do.  Problem here is that it's
too early and the (parent) colony isn't quite bursting yet -- not enough to
split.  It is also probably harder for them to maintain temperature.  Make
the split too early, and then a month later they might try swarming again.
In my experience, that is.
 
THese new colonies are supered over single brood chamber and excluder.
They seem to collect alot more late flow honey than the parent colonies;
they have real "get up and go."    Food for thought....