Hi Kevin,
When the weather is warm, you can work a split with one frame of brood and a frame of honey or a feeder right next to them. In late winter, early spring you need two frames of brood, a spare queen and a frame of honey.
When you have a nice day, identify which frames you are going to use to make the split. Put a spare box next to the hive you are splitting. Put a queen excluder next to the hive. Have you hive tool and smoker ready.
Pull the frame of honey and put it in the spare box.
Pull a frame of brood and shake off all the bees. Check for the queen in case she is hanging on the frame. Put that frame in the spare box.
Pull the second frame of brood, shake off all the bees. Check for the queen! Put that frame in the spare box.
Put the queen excluder on top of the old box with the old queen.
Put the spare box on top of the queen excluder over the old box with the old queen
Put the outer cover back on.
Let it sit over night or a day or two until you have a new queen
The bees will cover the brood with as many nurse bees as required for the amount of brood.
When you are ready to set up the new hive with a new queen:
Put the new bottom board in place where you want the hive to be and have the new outer cover handy
Put the queen in your pocket or next to the new bottom board where she is handy
Take off the outer cover on the old hive.
Take the spare box with the two frames of brood and a honey frame off the old hive and the bees that are on them
Put that box on the new bottom board
Put the new queen between the two brood frames just as if starting with a package
Put both outer covers back on
Sit back, listen to the bees hum and check for the new queen acceptance in a day or two
Yes, you can split a package. It is more difficult when the weather is cold. It is easier with drawn comb than with just foundation. You will need an extra queen. There are not many bees in a package to make this type of split work easily.
Put frames in two empty boxes and put the boxes together touching each other.
Put a queen excluder over the middle of the two boxes
Put both queen cages on the queen excluder about over the middle of each box
Smoke the package or sugar water them. This helps cover the package queen's pheromones
Dump the package bees in the middle of the queen excluder as best you can
The bees will usually walk over to the queen cages with a reasonable amount going to each queen cage
Sweep the bees into each box and put the queens into the boxes in the usual queen introduction method
If the weather is nice they will build up slowly at first and then get back on track
Some beekeepers put the queen cages under the excluder between frames in each box and let the bees walk through the queen excluder to the queen of their choice.
If this doesn't make sense, please let me know.