Garrett Dodds wrote:
 
> I split my hives around the 1st of May.
> Putting the split with a new queen on top of the parent hive.  These two
> build up together with the parent colony looking like a regular single
> queen colony and the split building up to a deep and a medium by the honey
> flow (mid June), both overflowing with bees.  When the honey flow starts I
> go around and combine the two units (or take a split out of the parent hive
> to replace winter loses or to increase).  I arrange the brood boxes so that
> the young brood is on the bottom and the sealed brood is on the top of the
> brood nest, with any supers put on top of the brood nest.  After that I
> just add and add supers until I run out of supers or it's time to pull the
> honey.  I rarely ever look at these hives after I combine them, maybe one
> or two per yard to get an idea of what's going on.  These hives produce an
> average of 5 to 6 medium supers (to be conservative, the range is 4 to
> 10+).  I have never seen one of these hives swarm, they just produce pound
> after pound of honey.  By fall they are the size of a really strong single
> queen hive, with more honey stored for winter and normally twice the amount
> of pollen stored.  They are over wintered in 3 deep hive bodies.  And come
> out of the winter with huge populations, ready to be split when you can get
> the queens.
 
I do exactly the same as Garrett, and with the same results as far as
honey production.  I would say, though, that I have had an occasional
swarm, so it is not the perfect panacea for that problem.  If a swarm
emerges, it is *enormous*, and I just can only hope that I will be aware
of it and can hive it in time.  That is quite an experience!
 
Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA