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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #11124  by RDGBEES
 10 Jun 2021, 16:07
Hi,

Today I carried out an an artificial swarm and split my hive.

I have used the pagden method which after 7 days advises to move the original hive to the opposite side of the new hive to strengthen with the foraging bees.

I have limited space in my apiary and would struggle to move the original hive to the opposite side of the new one.

I've seen a few people on the internet suggesting it's not absolutely necessary to do this.

What are everybody's thoughts please?

Thanks in advance
 #11125  by AdamD
 10 Jun 2021, 17:04
No it's not necessary to bleed off more of the flyers. However there are two reasons for doing this
a) to strengthen the colony with the (old) queen to keep the honey coming in (we hope) and
b) to hope that the queenless colony doesn't attempt to swarm if you have left 2 queencells in the hive. Therefore you need to check that there is only one queen that's allowed to emerge from her queencell or you might have a swarm with half the bees, leaving the younger virgin to take over a much-depleted colony.
If you have left an open queencell in the queenless colony, you know you have 8 days before that queen emerges so other queencells need to be gone before she does. If you have left a sealed q/c in there, you cannot be sure when she will emerge so you need to go in say, every 3 days to ensure there's no other emergency queencell present. You can shake bees off frames to ensure that you have not missed a queencell but don't shake the frame that the wanted queencell is on as you could dislodge her from her food source.
A tip (possibly from Roger P?) if you feel that you have to shake a frame, is to shake a frame with a queencell upside down, so that the larva is not dislodged. Does anyone do that?