Combining Splits

[Horse Shoe]

I made 2 walk away splits 2 weeks ago. Both splits were given frames of eggs / brood as well as food and additional feed. Neither box was given a queen with the intent that they would make their own. As of yesterday, one box has a capped queen and the other does not. Both boxes have good qty's of bees since all of the capped brood they were given has hatched.

My question, would you advise combining the 2 boxes (news paper method) and letting them raise the capped queen or would you introduce a frame of eggs / larvae to the box without a capped queen.

Thanks for any input.

[Merlinspop]

First thought is to give them another frame of eggs/larvae.

[Stanisr]

Are you sure they don't have a queen. If not I would give them a frame of eggs and brood and let them raise a new queen.

[Horse Shoe]

I didnt see her if she was there or any activivity (eggs, etc.) to make me think they have a queen. Its possible she was out on a mating flight.

[rwurster]

I'd give another frame of eggs/brood.

[Horse Shoe]

So, I was all fired up today. I went to go look into the box that I knew had a capped queen last week and to add fresh brood / eggs to the box that seemed to have nothing going on. Well, just when you think you have it all figured out....

1. The box with the capped queen STILL has a capped queen and there are lots of cells with 2-3 eggs in them (should I assume this is from laying workers). I went ahead and added a frame of brood / eggs to them just in case the queen doesent emerge.

2. I opened the box that I mentioned above not having any sign oof queen activity and immediatly found a small amount of fresh eggs. Humm, better check for a queen just in case before I go and add any more eggs from another box. Low and behold, about 4 frames in, there she is working along like shes been there forever. I went ahead and added a 2nd deep super to this one to give them room to expand in case they build up faster than I expect.

So, I guess the lesson I learned was to keep an open mind.

[bevy's honeybees]

I had something similar happen. I had a tiny swarm move into a deep box at my apiary in early March. I added a frame of brood from another box just to give it a boost. At the end of March I saw what I thought was a virgin queen, as I don't know for sure what a vq looks like, only that this queen looked much narrower, almost triangular compared to my other queens. The colony seemed so weak, and on 4/6 I moved it into a 4 frame nuk to bring it to my back yard. While transfering I though the colony was queenless. I brought it home anyway to decide what to do. I have another nuk in my back yard, also a swarm catch and it's doing well.

So I was trying to decide what to do with the tiny queenless nuk and just left it--until yesterday, as I've been watching entrance and they've been bringing in nectar and pollen since bringing it home. Yesterday, I went in, looked at a frame, small patch of capped brood. Where did that come from? Another frame, the frame I'd added at the start, more fresh capped brood. Next frame, low and behold the queen! And I almost had combined those bees with other nuk, so glad I waited!