I was recently successful notching a walk away split. My process was standard: 2 frames of capped brood with 2 of honey/pollen. Notch capped brood frames in several spots and await queen hatching. To my amazement it worked.
Here's my question: I wish to do more splits and try notching again. This time I was planning on notching a selected frame of capped brood and leaving it in the mother (queen right) hive for a week or so prior to making a split. This would provide the split with a jump start. My concerns are will having notched queen cells (as many as 6-8) promote swarming instincts in the mother hive. And/or will the existing queen in the mother hive kill off the cells prior to hatching? Would adding a queen excluder between brood boxes help?
