For you experienced beekeepers, how do you know when you need to split your hive? I'm assuming I won't need to do it this year, as my hive was installed last spring. But I'm looking forward to next year, and what I will need to do. I'm getting ready to add the honey super this week.
Well, one sign to split it is if you start seeing queen cells..... but you really don't want to wait until that happens!
If the majority of your brood frames are full of brood/honey/pollen and there are lots of bees around, then you should consider splitting, especially if it's early in the season and the nectar flow hasn't yet arrived or is just coming on. Otherwise, they are liable to swarm on you if they feel they have run out of room.
If you want to keep a strong hive for honey production, you might just split off 3 frames into a 5 frame nuc with some extra bees shaken in for good measure. Make it a mix of eggs, larvae, capped brood and at least on frame that's mostly honey. Add in two empty frames to the nuc. If you make sure that there are eggs in there, they will make their own queen (or you can purchase a queen to add). Add drawn foundation back to the original hive to give the queen a place to lay. If you don't have any drawn comb and there's a strong nectar flow, you could add undrawn frames and they should draw them out pretty fast.
If they seem really crowded, you should split off more frames.
If you do see queen cells, one "trick" you can try is to move the queen with the split into a nuc and leave the queen cells in the original hive. That fakes the bees into thinking the swarm has taken place already and then they might not swarm on you. Eventually, you'll need to requeen the nuc.
