We're you ahead of the swarm?
If they had already swarmed, then perhaps you removed a virgin or newly mated queen.
If they had already swarmed, then perhaps you removed a virgin or newly mated queen.
Simulated Swarm Question
Help! I split a hive last weekend. Decided to split after seeing about 10 swarm cells - all empty. Took the queen, some nurse bees, a couple frames of honey/ pollen. Left 5 frames of eggs, larvae, and capped brood. About 50/50 split in total. Checked the old queenless hive today and all of the eggs were GONE. There was one swarm cell barely worked with a small larvae in it. The rest were empty. What to do? Leave it? Recombine?
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Yes, I was ahead of the swarm. Took the queen to the new location. Spotted her - for sure. She is happy and laying in the new location.
There are no eggs in the old hive now. If they don't have 100% success with the only cell they are building, they will be queenless before the main flow.
There are no eggs in the old hive now. If they don't have 100% success with the only cell they are building, they will be queenless before the main flow.
Two possible solutions...
You could take a frame with some eggs on it, from the split that has the queen, and give it to the original hive to make themselves a queen.
You could recombine the split with the queen to the original hive.
cchoganjr
You could take a frame with some eggs on it, from the split that has the queen, and give it to the original hive to make themselves a queen.
You could recombine the split with the queen to the original hive.
cchoganjr
Today is Wednesday yes? Last weekend was 3 or 4 days ago. Eggs change into Larvae in 3 days. If you still had eggs, then you would have a queen in there still. No eggs, no queen. They should build queen cells now. They use larvae that are 1 to 2 days old to make queen cells, so you should be seeing some made anytime now, so long as you left some eggs with it when you made your split. It is hard to spot queen cells on hive combs until they are a couple days old.
Those are the two choices I am mulling over now. Since flow is coming early this year, I am probably going to recombine so we have a strong colony to gather.
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