Brood Survival

[Leather Jim]

 My question is how long will brood survive after the comb is cutout of the hive? Temps required etc. My hope is to get some eggs and uncapped to salvage some packages I installed almost 3 weeks ago only 1 out of 4 has a laying queen :(  Doing a cutout tomorrow, looks to be a strong hive. I'm running a top bar so I plan to lace comb to my bars. Any advice would be great as I'm pretty new to all this. Thanks

[Bees In Miami]

The brood life is totally depended on weather and temps...you didn't provide much info.  You are saying you want to save brood and eggs, but saying there is no queen?  It's late, I am tired, so maybe I am misunderstanding, but are you POSitive your hives are queenless???  Why are you sure they are queen-less?  How will you 'lace' them to the TB?  3 weeks is not a long time...you sure they are queen-less?  Did the bees have to completely draw new comb?   

[Bee Busters]

how long the brood will last will also depend on the age of the eggs/brood.  Eggs don't seem to last as long when cutout and unattended.

Checkout this video for hints on how to put cut combs into a top bar hive.
Learning Top Bar Hive Beekeeping - Fixing Comb 1/2

[njfl]

I also agree that you may want to wait a bit more to find out whether or not you have healthy queens.  You may have a few late starters.

That being said, I see no problem in introducing a comb of eggs and brood at the same time. You would want to introduce the new comb on the same day, as the eggs and larva would most likely not make it outside a hive overnight.

If you get lucky you may even find some nice queen cells.  A few weeks ago I did a cutout and counted over 40 queen cells in the colony.  Good luck!

[Leather Jim]

Well the cut out went well, I'll detail a bit tomorrow. Sure hope I got the queen because she is a laying fool. Salvaged 15 bars of brood,  capped, uncapped and eggs,  she layed in every hole she could find open. Put 9 bars in the new hive with about 6 lb of bees, the rest of the brood got spread between my suspected queen less hives so they can start some queen cells. All in all a good day, worth 4 hours on a 10' stepladder. : )

[njfl]

Nice job Leather Jim!  Looking forward to the details.