cut down split, now bearding heavy.

[windfall]

Last saturday I tried a cut down split on my strongest hive. I pulled all the open brood, the queen, and much of the stores to fill a 8 frame deep and moved it next door.
Left behind was capped/mixed worker brood, a LOT of frames capped drone brood, some partially filled store frames, and a number of partially drawn and empty frames.

Not surprising starting that night or the next, the queenless portion of the hive (in old location) began bearding heavily. It has been warm and wet here during this week; and between that, the change in interior space, the field force returning, and capped brood hatching out...well I assume that accounts for it.

What I am wondering is have I started a problem? Do you really need empty drawn combs to replace the combs removed to pull off this manipulation properly? I don't recall reading that but it seems like they need some where for this population to spread out inside when it returns at night (no bearding by midday, only at night). I know they can't swarm until they raise a new queen. Will the crowding in the meantime push them to swarm as soon as the virgins emerge, before they get a brood nest going again?

 My hope was that in that time all that drone brood would hatch out and they could backfill those frames (for harvest) while also having empties to draw out. But now I am wondering if I should go back in after q-cells get capped and split off a nuc or 2?

[D Coates]

You could split off a nuc or two but you'll have a population drop as the new queen get situated so I'd leave them alone.  You didn't mention if you've got SBB's.  More than likely the hive is hot and trying to cool down.

[Michael Bush]

The concept of a cut down split is the "cut down" which means you shrink the brood nest and crowd the bees up into the supers.  Assuming you added adequate supers they should be in the supers drawing comb.  But even if you did add an adequate amount of room you have still crowded them and they may beard more.

[windfall]

Thanks guys,

Dcoates, There is no SBB on this hive, but I do have the ability to drop the bottom and add a screened panel,that may be a good option. It's easy to do just 4 screws.

They hive is actually in the "back" of a long hive. I made a split there last year for lack of gear at the time. They wintered well and I have been building them vertically this spring as they built up to 3 deeps total. But I do want them out of there. My plan was to do the cut down split and reduce them by 1 box (now done). Then let them raise a new queen and hopefully harvest some honey, then mid/end summer pull the remainder to a new location and let the foragers combine back into the "main" hive in the front.

Michael, perhaps I was unclear. I did not mean empty comb to replace into the broodnest where the open brood was taken, but to be placed above as storage. I thought I had left them plenty of room (perhaps not?), but much of it is just empty frames at this point. I sure would like to find a way to keep that big pile of bees sitting outside busy at nights.