>Hot tip of the day: you can make divides by placing deadouts upside down....
>Please, a little more explanation - especially to why the upside down part

I am sorry, but I slipped that in at the end to see if anyone was listening.
Although, I have had in mind for quite a while writing an article on good
and bad ways of making splits. I saw this back in the 1970s working for Jim
Austin, and then again recently in a commercial beekeeper's yard.

This method will no doubt be only of interest to those who have the bottom
boards nailed on their hives. There comes the dilemma of how to restock the
hive without removing any frames. 

Here you simply set the dead hive on top of a good one, upside down. The
queen moves up and fills the hive with brood. After a month or so, you can
set the hive back on the ground (right side up!) and re-queen the queenless
portion. 

Another method used by Jim was to set the dead hives behind the good ones.
The two story good hive was smoked heavily at the entrance to drive the
queen and most of the bees up into the second box, which was then set over
onto the single story "dead out". 

We made hundreds of splits per day using these and other methods. Few frames
were removed, mostly just to be sure there was brood in both halves. Of
course, given more time, there are much better ways to split hives. But that
is another story

pb

****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm   *
****************************************************