I started out with 5 hives, and now I have 11! All but one of the hives started as nucs this spring. A week ago, I stole 7 capped brood frames and 2 honey frames from among my hives and made a queenless hive for queen rearing. I used eggs from a nuc that I received from a friend. These bees are definitely qualified to be the egg donor hive. I used the hopkins queen rearing method to create the queen cells. On monday I split down all of my hives to 5-frame nucs, except for the queen donor hive, which I hope to get some honey from, and the queen rearing hive; those three colonies I split down became nine, three of the nucs keeping the original queen. Last night, after leaving the bees queenless for a day, I gave the capped queen cells to my nucs as well as one to the cell builder hive. In two weeks or so I should start to see eggs. The nucs with queens will be donating frames of capped brood to bolster up the weaker nucs so they can all take off when the queen starts laying.
justgojumpit