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I split a hive earlier this year to repopulate a hive that had failed (robbed to the point of starvation by another hive). All I'll say is it's a bit riskier when the buggers aren't stingless.
Interesting hive, that. Wouldn't work for European honey bees because they produce much more honey and if you can't expand the hive to allow more space for storage they swarm.
So I have two questions:
Did you split just to enable a second colony or also to presenting swarming (often a strategy used for swarm control with European bees)?
One of the very few things that I know about Tetragonula is that when they swarm to create a new colony, they're more likely to attack an existing colony and take over their home than find a completely new site (housework's already been done by the poor buggers they attack). Which sounds as if people keeping multiple hives of stingless bees might have an extra thing to worry about and an extra motivation for controlling swarms. Is that actually a potential problem, do you know? Is there a risk of one of your hives trying to turf out the other one at some point?
I know from sad experience that with multiple European bee hives there's a risk of them attacking each other if one hive is weak but they do that to rob honey, not to evict the tenants. Even if they did, European bee swarms like to move a reasonable distance away from their old home, so a local turf war wouldn't be a thing.
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itsbruce
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We got a second hive today, so happy! Was fascinating splitting the hive and transplanting eggs from the old hive into the new... It's a pretty easy process for Oz natives, think I feel confident enough to have a go myself next time... I think I've found a new hobby!
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