[crabbydad]

split my queen from a strong over wintered hive into a nuc on April 19. replaced 2 frames i removed with foundationless. checked on may 20 and there were eggs in the new comb on the foundationless frames. the hive is full of nectar/pollen. not really many empty cells. checked yesterday(may 27, capped brood on the foundationless, pretty sure they are drones. scattered thru the boxes i found young larva, and a decent patch of eggs in one box. there wasn't much room because of all the nectar/pollen and capped honey. i do have a super on that they are now filling with nectar. i think the reason i'm not seeing capped worker brood is that from what i read they seem to like to build a lot of drone cells when they first get foundationless and the fact that there was not much available space for the queen to lay. i did not see her, but i did not check every frame in this large hive. i will check in another week to see if the eggs i saw are workers. do you think i'm queen rite given that i did see eggs at 4 weeks even though they are probably drone?

 

[Ross]

What did they sound like and how did they act? You can often tell if they have a queen or not by the sound and how frantic they act. I'm betting you have a young queen that is just starting to lay well. Give it a week. And give them some room if they are honey bound.

 

[Beelosopher]

I think you are all set with your queen, but to your point if your foundationless frame has drone brood sized cells on it, you should see drones reared. You should be able to see the size difference between drone and worker brood cells (I know I can tell).

If you have some worker sized comb that is drawn you should put it in and hope the queen get s on it first before nectar and pollen backfilling starts. I am watching all my new splits this year and have reserved drawn worker brood sized comb to toss in, if needed, right after mating flights. I can see they are pulling in a lot of nectar now. What has worked out very well for me is that my splits also included two undrawn frames. Most of the splits have started to draw those out while waiting on their new queens to start laying.