Flight Swarm
Lexikon
With a flyer split, the beekeeper uses the homing behavior of the foragers to form a new colony.
With a flyer split, the beekeeper uses the homing behavior of the foragers to form a new colony. To do this, the original colony is moved to another spot in spring, while a new hive with a food comb, a brood comb, and foundation is set up at the old location. The returning foragers, which still remember the old spot, gather there by themselves and form the new colony together with the brood provided.
Since the flyer split is initially without a queen, it raises a queen itself from the young, open brood available. After about twelve days the first queen emerges and kills her rivals that have not yet emerged. Alternatively, the flyer split can be given a foreign queen or a queen cell about to hatch right away, which makes it capable of developing much faster.
In practice, the flyer split is well suited to increasing colony numbers with the material available, because no additional bees from outside are needed and the foragers would return to the old location anyway. A day with lively flight is important, so that as many foragers as possible actually find their way into the new box at the old spot.
A common misconception is to equate the flyer split with the shook split. With the flyer split, the bees find their way into the new home by themselves through their memory of the location, while with the shook split they are actively brushed off the combs. In practice the two methods are often used in combination, but they are based on different biological principles.