[Terk]

Rather than looking for advice before I start a two queen hive, I am trying to make one ASAP because the attendants that came with a premated queen died off and action needed to be taken immediately to save the queen. The hive that I introduced her to became week because it most likely swarmed and it took a lot of time for the virgin queen to start laying. A month ago I had enough bees to consider doing a three way split, but the population has declined considerably since then, but new bees have begun emerging. What I did was that I placed the queen under a push in cage and affixed it to a frame of emerging brood. After 24 hours there were between 30 to 50 newborn attendants in the cage with the queen. I'll be letting them out carefully later in the day in order to make room for more emerging brood. The hive bees that are outside the push in cage cling softly to the cage and are brushed away easily without becoming aggresive.

I made sure all of the bees were swept down to the lower box before I placed a queen excluder between the two brood boxes. There are no supers on the hive because I only had one queen excluder handy. I did not use any newspaper for the bees to chew through. Should I have? Do the chances of queen acceptance look good considering that new bees that love the queen are being born fast and the old bees are slowly dying out? Should I just keep the second queen in the push in cage for two more weeks at which point, most if not all, of the old bees would have expired?

Thank you, Terk

 

[HIVE+]

Consider setting the two brood chambers side-by-side and super, spanning both hives. I think the bees will accept the new queen, it's the other queen you need to worry about.
Nothing gets responses like bad advice.