My April 15th split

[spafmagic]

So I checked my split yesterday. The 7 or so queen cells are gone, most of the frames are backfilled with nectar. There is a little bit of capped brood left. No virgin queens found. I would assume the virgin is already on her mating flight, and this is normal until she gets back?

[BeeMaster2]

Spar,
The inspection was a little bit early but since you did, you might want to add another frame of eggs to this hive. If you do, open the hive , add a frame and get out with minimal disruption. Depending on how far along the queen cells were when you saw them it is very possible she is about to to mate or may start laying. If the queen hatched right after your last inspection, you should have seen eggs. Give her another 10 days before the next inspection.
Jim Altmiller

[spafmagic]

Got ya. I figured since it had been 2 weeks by the 30th, one of the Queen's from those cells had to have hatched at that point and by the 5th, would be about ready to fly out to get mated.

[BeeMaster2]

With new queens, being mated, laying eggs and having open brood are all different.
If she was just mated, first, you have no indication that she was mated, no eggs. Newly mated queens are hard to spot and tell f they are mated. More importantly she still hasn?t proven herself and could bee killed by the bees.
If she just has eggs, she still hasn?t proven herself and eggs can bee hard to spot, especially by newbees.
Once she has a large brood area of wet larvae the bees tend to bee less disturbed by your intrusions.
Jim Altmiller