.  I then take out normally 5 frames
> of brood and shake all bees off.  Replace these frames with empty
> frames(drawn or foundation).  Place Queen excluder on top of hive body.
> (most of my hives are double)  A hive body with the frames of the
> removed brood plus another 5 frames on top of the excluder.  Put the lid
> back on and proceed to next split.  You can work the yard and go back
> later and remove or remove the next day the top hive box and set it on
> bottom board shake maybe a couple more frames of bees in box and put
> cover on.  Move to new location install new queen and you are done.
> Even if weather is a tad nasty you can still make splits.
>         This way you have the right amount of bees covering your brood.
>  You don't have to look for the Queen as all bees are shook below the
> excluder.  I have very good luck with this method and is very quick and
> easy.
 
The only difference betw. your method and ours is that we simply shake the
top brood chamber into the bottom one. we then put the excluder on the
bottom chamber, then the top chamber on the excluder.   We then proceed
like you would.
 You can either run them as singles or put seconds on them later.    We
made 600 splits this way last year and we were pleased with the results.
 
We used to worry that queens could be damaged with this crude method.  But
it seems that they can take more abuse than we thought and so we don't
worry about it anymore.
 
PS....Don't try this method if there is a big spring flow.  It will make a
mess and can be hard on open brood.
 
Kevin Christensen
 
Mallaig, Alberta, Canada