I tried to do a walk away split and failed. I ended up with a weak laying worker hive (a single deep). I started in a deep but it quickly only had 2-3 frames of bees, so I moved them into a nuc. Over a month I added three frames with eggs and larva (I added them each about a week apart). I noticed that when the hive got weak in the deep that there was a pretty big problem with chalk brood. Now when I look at the frames in the nuc I see shotgun patterned cell caps that are darker then normal. The cell caps seem about the height of the cell. At first I though maybe AFB, but I don't smell an odor. I haven't done a rope test but I will. Looking at pictures it looks more like EFB. However, looking at some chalk brood photos, I'm wondering if it could be left over cells from the chalk brood? It does kind of resemble this photo I found online:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/images/disease/F5a-chalkbrood.jpg
However I didn't see larva in there last time I looked. I'm wondering if a weak hive will leave behind the old chalkbrood capings? I'm at the point where I think I am just going to shake out the nuc, but now wondering if its is EFB if I need to burn my frames and scorch my box. Kind of a bummer, I was thinking about adding the deep and frames back to my strong hive, which is full at a deep and two mediums of honey. I was thinking I could add back the deep and then harvest two mediums instead of just one! But I definitely don't want to contaminate the strong hive..
I want to start running more colonies (2-4, I have only 1 queen right atm). But I'm hesitant to keep buying things, like queens at 20$ a pop. Maybe I should look into raising queens, or catching swarms?
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/images/disease/F5a-chalkbrood.jpg
However I didn't see larva in there last time I looked. I'm wondering if a weak hive will leave behind the old chalkbrood capings? I'm at the point where I think I am just going to shake out the nuc, but now wondering if its is EFB if I need to burn my frames and scorch my box. Kind of a bummer, I was thinking about adding the deep and frames back to my strong hive, which is full at a deep and two mediums of honey. I was thinking I could add back the deep and then harvest two mediums instead of just one! But I definitely don't want to contaminate the strong hive..
I want to start running more colonies (2-4, I have only 1 queen right atm). But I'm hesitant to keep buying things, like queens at 20$ a pop. Maybe I should look into raising queens, or catching swarms?