I've been told that for comb honey production, I should split the hive, with the queen going into the part that is moved away and the remaining part be given a frame of eggs to raise its own queen. .
WHY ??? If you split your hive, it is not able to get honey.
and the remaining part be given a frame of eggs to raise its own queen. .
Queens are very cheap. There is no idea to raise own queen from one hive. It takes 3-4 weeks untill new queen starts to lay eggs. And it takes 2 months that your eggs of the new queen starts to gather honey as a masses of field worker.
It makes sense, if hive begins to show mark about swarming. It means tjat tehre are egg or larva in queen combs. In that case it is usefull to make a split or something else. So far there are no queen cells let hive to expand and harvest the honey.
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I have so much trouble getting my bees to work foundation through an excluder. .
Take it away. It is not needed.
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And I may want to try putting a Russian Queen in there, as I'll be installing two Italian colonies from packages this Spring, and maybe requeening the other half of the split with a Russian queen this fall.
It is good that you get more hives. learn to play with tehem and do not take extra difficult duties for you.
My goal in beekeeping is 1) big hives 2) good queens 3) much honey
If you split your hive, it will take 1-2 months untill it is ready to gather honey again.
If you have a couple of hives, it is veru difficult to get good queens from own hives. A professional has 1000 hives and he choose the mother queens from the best ones.
If hive has only 4 deeps or boxes, it is not able to get honey. 6 boxes full of bees take much more honey.
To give space for expandind hive is very important.
If your hive is doing to swarm, there is no sense to take daughter from that kind of hive. Daughters will swarm very easily. And swarming will ruin the honey yield.