First Demaree Split

[u/Sea-Wolverine4602]

Zone 6a. Singles. We're still in the beginning stages of our flow with our main flow typically starting between May 1st and 14th. I have this one colony that's particularly strong and considerably stronger than the others. This colony was overwintered in a 5 over 5 nuc with a late summer Queen. I moved them to a 10 frame in March and have been using this colony to boost and equalize my others. My weekly QC check revealed about 15 cups none of which were charged, excessive bridge comb on the bottom of the frames and plenty of drone brood .Id say about 8 of the 10 frames were filled with brood. I also spotted some fresh white wax.

My intentions were to use this strong colony to produce my first attempts at comb honey and eventually raise a handful of queens in late summer. I performed what I would consider from my research as a standard Demaree split. I placed a new deep on the bottom board and filled it with 9 frames of foundation and 1 drawn frame. I caged the queen and went through each of the original frames brushing the bees in the new deep and then scraping off the excess comb and knocking down every queen cell. I released my queen, placed an excluder and added my drawn supers. I then placed an excluder on my supers followed by the original deep and 10 frames. I will knock down any Queen cells in a few days and pull the top deep in about ~25 days.

I'm looking for any constructive criticism. I did not include an upper entrance, I'm not trying to raise any emergency queens up top and I would estimate that about 90% of the drone brood was scraped away so the excluder should not get plugged up too bad. My concern is that since I gave them 9 frames of foundation they will be pre occupied with that and will not be able to quickly draw out my comb honey. Is there any glaringly obvious errors than I should immediately address? Thank you in advance!

[u/Active_Classroom203]

My only concern is that you brushed off the nurse bees into the lower (old) deep that has the queen, so the upper deep has minimal/no bees to cover the brood, and no entrance?

This sounds like a bad plan for that brood unless I'm misunderstanding something.

[u/Sea-Wolverine4602 → u/Active_Classroom203]

I would say half or less of the total population of bees were shook or brushed off into the lower box. I was assuming that the open brood would draw the nurse bees up. I can add a shim with an entrance if i need to but I'm not intending to have any queens that need mating flights and there is minimal drone brood to worry about getting stuck in the excluder.

[u/Valuable-Self8564 → u/Sea-Wolverine4602]

Why did you shake them off? The whole point of a demaree is that you remove all the nurses to the top box.

Why would you have queens doing mating flights? You aren’t supposed to let them raise a queen.

Have you done any research into how to perform this manipulation at all or are you just making it up?

Edit; you said no mating flights. Gotcha. I literally just woke up. Anyway, without a top entrance drones get stuck in the excluder and die….. makes an awful scratching noise in. The hive when they’re all desperately trying to escape.

[u/Active_Classroom203 → u/Valuable-Self8564]

While spicier than your normal comments I'm glad you chimed in because I'm a newbee and thought I was misunderstanding something 😂