BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS

Cut-down split

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Duane:
I guess this is what a cut-down split is.  I saw queen cells, one of them capped, the rest at various stages.  Sometimes I get lucky and find the queen.  I moved her, open brood, and honey and pollen to a new location.  I left the queen cells at the old, removed all but the best looking one, and all the capped brood.  I didn't get a chance to look in until today, when I expected the queen to be close to be on mating flights.  I looked anyway, found the cell had hatched out, the cap was opened up.  It was getting stormy looking and it appeared all the bees were home and there were lots of them.  I also found half a dozen of capped queen cells I missed previously.  I did not get lucky in finding the new queen.

Past experience says that even though I've read the first one hatches out and is supposed to kill the rest, they will swarm several times.  With as many as these bees, it is likely they will think they can swarm.  I cut out all but one cell.  I might have missed some in the mass.  Any suggestions at this point?

iddee:
Only suggestion I have is get ready to buy a queen. I have never found a better way to kill a good hive than removing all or most of the swarm cells. They make several because they know success is not 100%. 

JurassicApiary:

--- Quote from: Duane on May 14, 2020, 10:39:08 pm ---I cut out all but one cell.  I might have missed some in the mass.  Any suggestions at this point?

--- End quote ---

As a future recommendation, I would leave the 4 largest cells when thinning out queen cells.  No less.

Duane:
Well, ok.  But what about them swarming?  That has happened in the past, and I've read that depending on things, they'll swarm until there's nothing left.  Being they started cells at various stages, that's what I was thinking they were going to do.

iddee:
If they swarm, it's because you didn't remove enough bees with the queen in the split.You have to remove enough for them to not be congested and they think they have already swarmed. I have heard people say a hive swarmed itself to death, but I have split hives before and still caught four swarms from it. It didn't die.

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