Split woes. Questions...

[ricky_arthur]

It's a sign of how little I know.  lol

So I did a one week check up on a split and a queenless hive.  Last week one hive balled their queen during a split.  After they killed her I put them back together for the time.  I checked it and a split off another hive today.

In the queenless hive I expected lots of emergency cells, and was planning to do the split off the emergency cells once capped.  There were only 3 cells, and they were not where I expected.







Do I dare steal one of the three to make a split?  This hive is booming with bees loaded with honey, nectar and pollen.  Why only 3?  And how are they on the bottom of the frames?  :scratch:

Then the split,  also only 3 queen cells but they are where I expect them to be, on the middle of frames.  However 2 things strike me as odd.  They have nearly filled the entire deep with nectar.  I mean every cell on every frame.  The weather has been crappy and cold for 3-4 days, how they have done this is beyond me.  I'm not feeding them.  Should I super this split?

Second, the queen cells were barely cups, meaning they had to be from eggs layed the day of the split.  Why did they wait 3 days to start queen cells?  they had tons of day old larvae on the day they went queenless.   So they are 3 days behind where I expected them to be.

Here is my main problen.  I leave for 2 months on Saturday, I have no way of seeing these 2 through their queenless stage and want to leave them with the best chance possible.  Anyone have any advice?

[biggraham610]

If it was me Id add a box, and leave the cells where they are, one may fail. If they are all good, they will figure it out. Leave one and it fails, 2 mos from now, it wont be pretty. Good Luck. G

[iddee]

1.. Emergency cells can be anywhere. Supercedure cells are normally in the middle of the frame, but even they can be on the edge sometimes.

2.. Yes, use one cell for the split.

3.. Yes, super the split.

4.. They will, at times, take awhile to realize they are queenless.

5.. They will likely do much better with you gone, and not constantly disturbing them.

Did I miss any?

[rwlaw]

The reason for the lack of Q cells (on that frame any way) is that's it's old comb. The bees can't make a proper cell when it's old and full of cocoon hulls.
Notice how that section of comb is curled downwards. What they did is floated the egg out with royal jelly and made a cell around it. If you had notched cell walls per Mel Disselkoen's OTS method http://www.mdasplitter.com, you'd probably would've gotten Q cells where you expected them to be. I usually notch cells even if the comb is tan colored, if it's freshly drawn comb I let the bees decide.

[OldMech]

What Iddee said..   If you have a frame from another hive with eggs, drop it in, or notch a few of the cells ( Mel Disselkoen's method) so you will know where the cells will be placed.. use wax, notch away from cross wires, or use a piece of foundation less if you have it...   Easier to cut the cells out.
   Pull a nuc and put the current cells into the nuc. Let them make more cells on the frame you just added.
  In the event of problems, you can always re combine the nuc with the new queen at a later time.