[b'sbees]

Hello Everyone,

Hope your season is going well wherever you are.

I did a cut-down split for the first time on a double deep hive that's been going strong for three years. I wanted to see how the cut-down worked and avoid a swarm like I had last year on this hive. I did the split on Easter Sunday, which for my area was little early (and cool), not realizing it was going to remain cool. Lesson learned.

So it's been four weeks since the split. I went in today and found a lot of opened queen cells but no eggs or larva. Should I assume that the queen might have been on her mating flight or should I introduce a queen myself just in case?

Thanks for any assistance,

b

 

[colby]

If you have access to another hive that is doing well you might transplant a frame with eggs or young larva as well as capped brood. Do that for the next two weeks. That will give the queen a chance to start laying. If it still does not look like there is a queen you could introduce one. If you leave the nurse bees on the donor frames (which is fine) just make sure the queen from the donor hive is not on that frame. Best of luck!

 

[johng]

I would not worry about it until about 30days. If you only took a couple frames of brood and the queen from a double deep hive it should still have plenty of bees to keep going until they raise a new queen. I don't do many walk away splits any more but when I do I still get nervous about 3 weeks in. But, three weeks is too soon to have a laying queen it normally takes another week before you will start to see eggs. If you are unsure or it has been longer than 4 weeks doing as Colby recommends will get you back on track.

 

[b'sbees]

Thanks for the suggestions.

During my inspection today they acted very much like they were queen less. That, coupled with no eggs or brood, and seeing at least 6 queen cells that had already opened, really confused me. It's possible that I just missed the queen but if a queen, or six, had hatched, they should at least have not been acting like they were queen less…right?