[Santa Caras]

Did a split using resources from 3 diffrent hives yesterday. Placed a caged mated queen in the new 5frme nuc. Entrance reduced to 1/2"x3/8. Them girls are not happy!! I see them hanging out front. Some defensive actions going on but no major affront for robbing. They are very defensive of me n buzz,bat,n sting (try to snyway) to up to 75'away.
Does this settle down? Thank gawd no neighbor outside parties goin on!

 

[Santa Caras]

*BUMP*
Still fiesty as of last night. I also saw them dragging out some unfinished capped brood. Drones maybe?? One of the frames of brood I put in had some cells of drone.
I'm still wondering about the combativeness of them tho and hopefully atrributed to them being "split" off from their orginal hive and still po'd about that. Does anyone know if splits are hot for awhile. My first split.
Thoughts anyone??

 

[bugmeister]

give them a few days- open the entrance- getting their house in order it sounds like!

 

[Zbee]

I recently started a NUC with a couple frames of bees and brood from my larger hives. New mated queen in a queen cage. Once she was introduced, they immediately took to her cage like Velcro. I closed them up and left for 3 days with the candy plug exposed. I came back and the bees were very defensive. I literally had to use a stick to peek in to see if she was released - and they were trying to sting that too. She had not been released but they were not letting me anywhere near.

Closed it up again and came back a couple days later worried that I would have a dead queen. Remarkably, they were calm and the queen was released and running along the frames.

In my experience, they are clearly agitated when they are confused, feel queenless, or in my case, the queen happens to be in a cage and they rather she wasn't.
My advice: let time work its magic and let them settle in.