Randy said,

> I've always split all my colonies in spring in order to emulate the natural process of spring swarming and requeening.

The feral derivatives that I am keeping off treatments have been very good at swarming every year despite my best efforts to prevent them from doing so.  Some colonies will even issue multiple swarms and the current record is five swarms from one hive.  It is likely that this behavior is part of what is allowing them to beat the mites as has been mentioned, and perhaps a part of why there is a (suspected) strong feral population here.

I have found a market for spring nucs and have decided that it is best to go ahead and routinely split out the overwintered queen and a few frames of bees just prior to our main flow from all of my hives.   The colonies that I have split in this way so far have haven’t swarmed after the split and have still been able to provide three to four mediums of harvestable honey in addition to yielding the nuc.

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