Thanks to all for the advisories. I should have mentioned that splits are not an option. I keep three hives with one backup. To requeen I have learned to add one to a NUC of eggs, double hive for a while, kill the lower queen and unite. It works for me because I am retired and not in the bee business for profit [other than knowledge]. I had sucess in Pgh in the early 1960s with Caucasians and sucess with Italians In Albemarle county, VA - until mites came. Starlines and Midnites and Yugos all presented problems. Sue Coby Carniolans have been great but you have to work with them and they are different. I got into trouble when my State Agent suggested queens would not cross a two inch barrier of capped honey so I should drop using queen [honey] excluders. It worked when I had two full sized brood boxes. When I shifted to three Illinois, the bees promptly filled and capped the top box [as well as three supers each last spring]. So I was in a space deficit. There was one frame of capped brood the second week of January, three frames the first week of February, an empty bottom box and a totally full middle box in March. When I removed Apistan strips the first week of April, I had 14 swarm cells per hive with every available space vertically between frames full of black drones. Much of what could have been brood cells were filled with pollen and nectar. The hives were boiling over with bees. Two of three hives have swarmed. I have removed 6 of ten frames of capped honey and replaced with undrawn comb [I make cut comb honey only] and added these to the new Queened NUCs I am building up to take over these two hives when the honey flow is over. {the third hive is into the second super so I have not touched it.} -yet. In the third spring of Carniolans I can say that three hives wintered with as large a cluster of bees as any Italians I have had and they ate less than half of the stores my Starlines did a year ago before I sold them [and those had not started brood until Mid March that year, a warmer than usual one]. John F. Mesinger [log in to unmask]