[AlanInNJ]

I did a walk away split last month. I did a lot of reading and watched a couple videos including one by my local bee association.

I split the hive, made sure the queen stayed in the original hive, pulled a couple frames of eggs, larva a brood and put them in a new box. A week later I checked and had 4 sealed queen cells. A week or so later I checked, and the queen cells had hatched out. I thought I was successful. But four weeks later, and still there was no new eggs, larva, or queen to be found.

I can confirm the original colony is booming.

So what went wrong?

 

[fieldsofnaturalhoney]

Lots of possibilities, queens battled it out and injury and/or death became on them, but most likely queen did not successfully return from her mating flight. I am sure their are others

 

[Fivej]

yup, sounds like you did everything right and she didn't make it. Give it another go. J

 

[Bdfarmer555]

Dragonfly, purple Martin, barn swallow, car windshield, bad luck. No way to tell for sure. Not anything you did, sometimes it just happens.

 

[JWPalmer]

Dragonflies are a problem for me after June. The apiary fills up with them and they are filling up on my bees. Had about 90% of my summer queens fail to return last year. I wonder if there is a market for dragonfly in acrylic paperweights?

 

[Fivej]

I would buy one of those JW and would pay extra if it had a queen in its mouth. J

 

[AlanInNJ]

Thanks guys. Glad to hear it likely wasn't anything I did wrong. I was so excited that it seemed to be working only to be disappointed. Oh well. I'll try it again for sure.

In the meantime I was able to get a mated queen from my local supplier, and I inserted her on Sunday. I'll check things out tomorrow.

Alan

 

[DaisyNJ]

I did a walk away split last month. I did a lot of reading and watched a couple videos including one by my local bee association.

I split the hive, made sure the queen stayed in the original hive, pulled a couple frames of eggs, larva a brood and put them in a new box. A week later I checked and had 4 sealed queen cells. A week or so later I checked, and the queen cells had hatched out. I thought I was successful. But four weeks later, and still there was no new eggs, larva, or queen to be found.

I can confirm the original colony is booming.

So what went wrong?

I am northern part of NJ. Due to fluctuating temperatures this time of the year, if I do splits, I do them other way. Take the original queen and few frames into Nuc and the let the strong, original hive make their own. You can even do OTS (On the Spot) style notching to encourage and know where to expect the queen cells.

You can also use what "Lauri" describes on this forum in detail. That is, turn the original hive 180 degrees and put a new box at the original location. Move queen, one frame of brood and rest all EMPTY UNDRAWN frames to that box. The original hive, now turned 180 degrees will raise their own queen. The box with original queen would have all the field bees will build comb on empty frames like crazy. You do have to feed the hive with queen.


Not saying splitting off Nuc to raise their own queen has to do with missing queen. But few pointers for future.

 

[pjigar]

Couple of frames of bees may not raise the best queen so it may have been a weak queen. Walkaway split means you distribute all resources (egg, larvae, bees, food, etc.) equally between two hives.