".....  the Charlie Mraz way is to create one new colony from one of the best 
colonies, allow the bees to select the larvae to use, and the colony 
which is productive for whatever reason (genetic, behavioral, microbial,
 etc) is made into two."

How about  if one were to leave the queen and, say, two or three frames of brood in the original location and then move the rest of the split to a new location.  After the bees have produced their replacement queen cells, one were to then again split the split into two, three, or four more nucs - depending upon the number of frames that have queen cells and the strength of the original split.   That way, one would have not two colonies but three, four, or five colonies.

Mike in LA


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