I had a hive out in the country that I just had not had time to get to until last Friday. I opened up the hive and saw they were crowded and had created a few swarm cells at the bottom of a couple of frames. As I continued my inspection, I found the old queen. I placed the frame with the queen on it in a nuc to transport that frame of bees and brood as well as 3 other frames full of bees. I left all frames with queen cells on them in the parent hive in hopes of making them think the old queen had swarmed and left. Well, since I triple checked the frame with the queen on it I was confident that she was in the transport nuc. When I got home, I placed the 4 frames of bees as well as the queen in a full size hive with drawn frames and some honey and pollen, plus added a 1 frame feeder to help get them a bit of a jumpstart. When I inspected the hive to make sure all was good on Tuesday, I could not find the queen, but found 3 queen cells on 1 frame, and 1 on another, all in the swarm location. With work pressing, I finished up and figured I would look in on them again on my days off 2 days later. So yesterday I had a chance to look inside the hive and do a more thorough inspection and still did not find the old queen, lots of bees in there though and now 3 of the 4 queen cells are capped. I did notice a little bit of chalkbrood too.
Sorry for the long description, but just wanted to paint the whole picture.
So now down to the question:
Since there is no queen present, should I split the resources evenly and place 1 frame with a queen cells in one nuc, and the other in another nuc, or just leave it all inside the current 10 frame hive? Would I be taking too much risk with the one colony since there is only 1 queen cell on that frame?
Thanks for the help/input,
Craig
Sorry for the long description, but just wanted to paint the whole picture.
So now down to the question:
Since there is no queen present, should I split the resources evenly and place 1 frame with a queen cells in one nuc, and the other in another nuc, or just leave it all inside the current 10 frame hive? Would I be taking too much risk with the one colony since there is only 1 queen cell on that frame?
Thanks for the help/input,
Craig