I split and they split!

[Csee]

My husband and I split 2 hives 4 weeks ago and moved the old hives to a location about 2 miles away. The new hives (left at home) are doing great. The old hives that we made the splits from - 1 is doing great but the other hive the bees are gone with the exception of a very small cluster. There is no queen or eggs left!! Anyone care to tell me what may have happened? Could they have swarmed? If we had mistakenly taken the queen out during the split, wouldn't they have made a new one.

[SwedeBee1970]

Look for a queen cell(s) with the small cluster in the next few days. Or just re-queen them if you feel it's going to be fine. Why not add a few more filled out frames if you can spare them.

[Ross]

You probably took the queen with your new split, so they probably moved next door to the other hive that has a queen. When you moved the hive, they had no orientation to keep them home, so they went to the queen scent. All guess work of course.

[papar]

you also want to make sure that you have enough capped and open brood, nurse and field bees for each split. Giving them a frame of fresh eggs will help too.

[Adrian Quiney WI]

What Papar said. The fresh frame of eggs will confirm whether there is a queen you missed - if they are queenless they will make some queen cells with those eggs. Adrian.

[johng]

You could also just combine the small hive with the other one also. Then you would have 3 hives that are doing good instead of 3 good hives and one that is struggling. JMHO