Nucleus Colony (Nuc)
Lexikon
A split is a young small colony that the beekeeper forms from the material of a strong production colony.
A split is a young small colony that the beekeeper forms from the material of a strong production colony. Brood combs with the bees sitting on them and food combs go into a separate hive, while the old queen deliberately stays in the parent colony. The split then raises a queen of its own, or it is given a ripe queen cell or a mated queen. Splits serve to replace winter losses, increase the number of colonies, renew the combs, and, as a side effect, prevent swarming, because brood and bees are taken from the colony.
Several forms are distinguished. In a brood split, the combs come from a single colony. In a combined brood split, brood combs from several healthy colonies are put together, usually one comb per colony. This curbs the swarming urge in several colonies at once and lowers the Varroa pressure there, but requires donor colonies that are perfectly healthy. An artificial swarm, formed as a shook swarm, for example, needs no combs at all: here bees are brushed off the combs into a box and housed anew together with a queen or a queen cell.
The location is decisive. The foragers know their old site and fly back to it. Anyone who wants to leave the split in the same apiary must therefore strengthen it well with young bees from open brood combs. It is safer to use a separate apiary for splits at least three kilometers away; then the bees stay in the new colony.
Typical beginner's mistakes are too few bees, too little food, and too much impatience. About nine days after the split is made, the queen cells it has raised are reduced to one, or two if necessary, otherwise the young colony may swarm itself. After that the little colony needs peace: it takes about three to four weeks for a queen raised by the colony to start laying. Only then is it worth checking whether the colony is queenright.