Looking for opinions here- what would you do in this situation:
- on May 3 I did a walkaway split from a booming hive - took 3 frames of brood of all stages and placed in a 5 frame nuc (+honey, pollen), I made close inspection to make sure queen is not on those 3 frames. Then I checked the rest of the parent hive but did not find queen- it was very crowded and not very happy, so I did not spend all day looking for her.
- On May 4 the cold weather period started here
- On May 5 I did a quick nuc inspection to see if they started queen cells and once again to make sure the queen is not there, nuc was sad and half empty, no queen or queen cells could be seen, so I was OK writing it off- it was too cold to try to recombine with the parent hive, so I decided to leave it as is until warm days.
- On May 13 (Today) - first warmer day, I opened the nuc and found my queen there alive and laying (although slowly, but there were not many nurse bees so that can be explained). It was still too cold to dig in the parent hive, but I have no doubt they would have queen cells and maybe even virgin queen by today or tomorrow.
Now the problem- I promised those 2 nucs (the other was split on the same day and is fine with 5 capped queen cells, all look OK) to a guy, but it will not look good if I sell him 2018 queen with the nuc.
So what do I do now? Wait for new queen to mate and then swap them (rather make a new nuc and recombine the old one with parent hive) or start over?
Any opinions welcome.
Thanks!
- on May 3 I did a walkaway split from a booming hive - took 3 frames of brood of all stages and placed in a 5 frame nuc (+honey, pollen), I made close inspection to make sure queen is not on those 3 frames. Then I checked the rest of the parent hive but did not find queen- it was very crowded and not very happy, so I did not spend all day looking for her.
- On May 4 the cold weather period started here
- On May 5 I did a quick nuc inspection to see if they started queen cells and once again to make sure the queen is not there, nuc was sad and half empty, no queen or queen cells could be seen, so I was OK writing it off- it was too cold to try to recombine with the parent hive, so I decided to leave it as is until warm days.
- On May 13 (Today) - first warmer day, I opened the nuc and found my queen there alive and laying (although slowly, but there were not many nurse bees so that can be explained). It was still too cold to dig in the parent hive, but I have no doubt they would have queen cells and maybe even virgin queen by today or tomorrow.
Now the problem- I promised those 2 nucs (the other was split on the same day and is fine with 5 capped queen cells, all look OK) to a guy, but it will not look good if I sell him 2018 queen with the nuc.
So what do I do now? Wait for new queen to mate and then swap them (rather make a new nuc and recombine the old one with parent hive) or start over?
Any opinions welcome.
Thanks!