[cmonkey]

I'll take this as a good sign, right? I put the feeder on and there was comb bridging the frames. It also looks like they're tearing down most of the queen cells. I saw one uncapped cell queen cell but I'm not sure if they're tearing that down, too, or it's just not finished yet.

I wonder if this means I accidentally moved the queen from 1 into the split...

 

[cmonkey]

I totally moved the queen. There are eggs and new larvae in the split. Well, if the cell I left in the mother hive doesn't do well, I'll just give them a new frame of eggs to work with, right? I'm sure they're confused as all get out, but it's nice to see some progress in the split already. Exciting, even though I don't know what I'm doing!

 

[Rick 1456]

I'll defer to the experts but it seems time is not on your side right now. Capped queen cell and you have 5-6 days till hatch depending,,then 3 to maybe 10 days to mate then she might not lay right away. So, what if that fails,,,,,and I've had it fail several times to me already this season, you start the process over. Can't see having enough time to go into cold weather strong with out some serious additional population intervention.
BTW, I just found out today I did the same thing,,,but I made the split 2 weeks ago on a monster hive.
My thoughts
Rick SoMd

 

[cmonkey]

It's the craziest thing. I have queens in both hives. I guess one must have hatched and mated and started during the 2 weeks or so I wasn't able to go in and check. So while there aren't a lot of eggs in either hive, they're in there for sure, and nicely placed in each cell, and in pretty good pattern, I think, given the space restrictions. I also saw a couple baby bees hatching, which was pretty cool. I let the kids hold a drone, and they thought that was the coolest thing ever. I pretended it was queen-handling practice, but really I want them to be interested and not scared of the bees. Okay, it was both.

So what to do now? I'm feeding the split, the mother hive has a good stock of honey, I think, and both have empty frames to work. I'm willing to consolidate the hives if that's the best move, but I'd like to give them both a chance to get up to speed before I do it.

 

[NasalSponge]

I would see how they do....might have to feed some depending on your fall flow but otherwise you made a split, see what they can do.

 

[cmonkey]

They're scarfing the syrup down like mad. I have tons of goldenrod around here, so they should have a good secondary nectar flow pretty soon. There's some weed in my field that looks like Queen Anne's Lace but isn't, and the bumbles sure like it, so I haven't clipped it for fear I'd be taking out a source for my girls. But I have yet to see any on it. The thistles are about to bloom, unfortunately, but I know bees like them, so I'm leaving those be. I need a Weeds of Wisconsin book .

Meh, I'll just wait them out and see how they do. If they fill the deep and can manage half a second deep on their own, and I feed for the rest, do you think that would get them through? They need two deeps basically full, right?