With the pollen arriving and the foraging in full force, the queen has been ramping up her population. This means that they are outgrowing their current living situation. One of two things can happen now. I can proactively split the hive into two hives or the hive will swarm, knowing that they have outgrown the space they have. This is, in a sense, nature’s way of making a split. I decided it was time to make the split myself and go back to having two hives. If I allowed them to swarm on their own, I would lose roughly half the population and likely my chance to harvest honey this spring.
I was able to locate the queen, move her into a new hive and place several frames of brood (eggs) in with her- along with loads of nurse bees and foragers. The original hive still had plenty of brood for them to raise a new queen and continue on.
Now I just have to wait about a month for the new queen to hatch, make her mating flight and return to begin laying eggs. At this rate, I should be able to get a harvest from the spring nectar flow as well as the summer one. Fingers crossed!