I checked my 4 remaining splits this afternoon and 3 of the 4 are definitely queenright. In the one I am unsure about I either have laying workers or the queen is so ambitious that she is laying 3,4,5 or up to 10 eggs in each of the very very few open cells in the nuc. The nuc got packed with honey since I last checked it on 5/3. A realistic estimate is there were no more than 30 cells on the 5 frames that weren't full of pollen or honey. The ones that weren't filled with either were filled with eggs. I did not see the queen, but that's not too unusual for me. Most of the eggs were on the bottoms of the cells, but what concerns me is that there were a few eggs stuck to the side walls of a handful of cells.
I took a medium frame of drawn comb and placed it in the #3 slot in the hive. The weather doesn't look cooperative for checking the nuc until Thursday so I wanted to see what you guys thought I might find when I checked again. I'm hoping there will be an egg dead center of the bottom of each cell in that medium frame.
Also, I MARKED MY FIRST QUEEN TODAY!
I was going to catch her but chickened out, so I dabbed her with my paint pen when she got hemmed up in the corner of the frame. LOL If my bee math is correct, she is still a virgin queen and she did look smallish, so I hope it's okay to mark a virgin.
So far this year I've made 6 splits and hived 2 small swarms with virgin queens. All 8 of them are queenright. :banana:
