How long without a queen?

[Marcus Griffin]

I split a hive almost two weeks ago without a queen ready. I've been reading and reading, but somehow reading doesn't always translate into knowing...So here the question.

Since I didn't make sure when I split my hive that one hive got the queen (I couldn't find her in a previous inspection) and I have no solid recollection of eggs in any of the frames I divided up, how long can my hive stand it without a queen. The weather here has taken a dive and I won't be able to get into my hives until Thursday, maybe Tuesday if it actually gets into the 60s and I tell my students to GO AWAY. At that time I could take a frame with eggs from another hive I know has a laying queen.

I know its all FUBAR at this point but what're my options? Order a queen NOW and recombine the splits? Hey....

[onlygoodSHBisdeadone]

Bees in the queenless split will raise a Queen off of a three day old larvee. It takes three days for egg to hatch plus three days for the larvee stage leaves you only ten days (+- day)from time of split for the queen to emerge. If its been almost two weeks you already have a virgin queen so inpection now will not show any queen cells becuase they would have already been torn down. New queen will not be mated and laying till roughly 14 days, possable longer depending on weather after emerging. So if you inspect Thursday you'll need to look for queen not eggs.
I'd waite till weather allowed inspection and look for her and if found but bee count was low add a frame of capped brood to increase count. If I couldn't find her add a frame of eggs and young larvee. If they have no queen they'll start queen cells from frame. If they do have queen they usually don't and will just add to bee count.

[Michael Bush]

If you did a split with some brood on both sides (especially if you split the brood pretty evenly) it's likely they got some larvae or eggs that would work to rear a queen. Still I'd check back when weather permits.