Naturally, there are a lot of factors that affect the number of splits. If you do it right, making splits is a quick, easy process. Knowing when to split a beehive helps you control swarms.
In my experience splits that are made with at least five frames of brood and pollen perform the best. These frames must be covered in a good layer of bees
Hence if you have a strong hive that is in two brood boxes, you should be able to make four splits into five-frame nucleus boxes. You can then place queen cells or caged queens in the queenless hives.
This will depend on how methodical you wish to be. If you want to make a quick walk away split it is really just a case of putting a few nucleus boxes on the ground next to the hive.
If it is a bit warmer, you may wish to find the queen bee. Put her in one nucleus box, and mark that box. Place queen cells or caged queens in the other boxes.
One method I have played with, and which some big beekeepers swear by, is a small single nucleus swarm control split. In this method, you build up a big production hive.
How many splits can be made from one hive if you really push the bees? A friend of mine had a “bee factory” in California in the 1990s. He had an unlimited supply of glucose sugar waste from a few candy factories.