Splits--how long can they go queenless?

**theriverhawk** · 08-12-2009, 06:52 PM

Hey gang,
I split three really strong hives today and ordered new queens for the new nucs. Wanted to give the now queenless a couple of days to recognize no queen, thus being more accepting to the new one.
Worked my tail off to find the old queens. Could only find her in one of the three. I'll open the nucs again in a couple of days to try to find the queens.

Question: On average, how many days do you think I can go queenless before having to deal with a laying worker? Just curious....

Thanks...

**alpha6** · 08-12-2009, 07:19 PM

Within 24 hrs a hive knows it's queenless. You can go a little while queenless...four or five days if you have too...longer if no queens are available but then it is going to be tough to intro.

Not sure how you do splits but here we pull brood frames, shake off all the bees into the hive and place the beeless brood into a hive body. After four or five of these we then place a queen excluder over the original hive body and then the beeless brood frames above the queen excluder. The nurse bees will then move onto the brood but the queen will not be able to. 24 hrs later we pull the top hive body and presto you have your nuc with no worry about not finding the queen doing the splits. You also have a good grouping of nurse bees with are more accepting for intro queens.

I wouldn't be introducing a queen into the nuc unless you are positive its not in there..otherwise you could lose...no you will lose your newly bought queen.

**bnatural** · 08-12-2009, 07:33 PM

Originally Posted by alpha6

Not sure how you do splits but here we pull brood frames, shake off all the bees into the hive and place the beeless brood into a hive body. <snip> You also have a good grouping of nurse bees with are more accepting for intro queens.

I LIKE that. But, I don't like excluders (have a few though, so I COULD use them). Do you think if I put the naked brood frames in a box ABOVE an empty (or full) super, ti would work the same - nurse bees moving up and queen staying out? How about putting them over the inner cover with the hole left open? Ideas for next year....

Bill

**theriverhawk** · 08-12-2009, 07:50 PM

Alpha,
Because we have such a warm winter here in Alabama, when I split, I just take a 9 frame brood chamber and split it 5 and 4. Then in the spring, I move them as soon as possible into a brood chamber. Also, because of warm winters, we can operate on only one brood chamber thru the winter.

Blessings...

**Terry Small, Jr** · 08-12-2009, 09:36 PM

It seems like every time we make divides we do it differently. The way we find which half of a split got the queen is pretty straightforward & foolproof. We number the splits before trucking them to a different yard, so the splits can't drift back to the parent colony. On the fourth day after making the split we go back and look for eggs. The eggs in the queenless colony will have all hatched out by then. If we find eggs, the corresponding colony at the other location gets a new queen.

Speaking of splits, I found out the other day that we have 500 queens on order. The way we're doing it this time is to put a fume board on to force the bees into the lower deep, install a queen excluder, then come back the next day to haul off the upper deep and install the new queen.

**Hambone** · 08-12-2009, 09:54 PM

I know curiosity killed the cat....but,

I split three really strong hives today

Why wouldn't you just let them raise their own? I have a couple of hives I am going to requeen with bought, but my stongest ones I am spliting and letting them raise their own. I know Alpha and Terry are commercial so it's a different story, but for us got a few hive guys, letting them raise their own from a strong stock seems like a good idea...just thinking out load....

**Michael Palmer** · 08-13-2009, 04:45 AM

It's not laying workers that I would worry about. If you wait too long, the bees will start emergency cells, and % queen acceptance will go down. 2-3 days is ok. Longer than that and you need to kill the E cells.

**theriverhawk** · 08-13-2009, 05:22 AM

Derek,
I would usually let them raise their own queen. As a matter of fact, I plan on doing just that again next spring when I split again. These three hives were really strong so I knew that they could handle a late season split. With these nucs, I wanted to try out the Minnesota Hygenic queen. My father has placed a few of these in hives and LOVES them.