Yesterday, I inspected one of my hives right after work. This hive had wintered over with two brood boxes and a super 1/8 full of honey. When I opened the hive, it was almost completely full of bees. There was very little open space. I double checked for queen cells, being concerned that a swarm was pending. I didn't find any. There was plenty of brood and uncapped larva. In addition, I had a reasonable amount of drones.
I spent a lot of time, trying to find the unmarked queen with no luck. She's there, given the fresh larva and brood cells. I did a "walk away split", starting up another colony with two frames of fresh brood and larva, plus several frames of bees. The new colony is screened in, while the new hive adjust and makes queen cells. I'm a little concerned that I couldn't find the queen, but the original hive was bursting with bees and fresh larva, so she must be in there some place.
Both colonies have plenty of bees, brood and larva. So my risks should be low. The queen is in one of the them, I just don't know which one. In about a week or ten days, I'll inspect again and look for queen cells. For now, I'm heavily feeding both hives. The original hive is un-screened, so these girls are fee to collect pollen, etc.
Hopefully, I've done everything right and should have a successful split. Not finding the queen still bothers me. I checked each frame twice, slowing uncoupling piles of bees to see if "Her Majesty" was somewhere with the piles. No luck.
Well, I'll just have to wait and see how thinks pan out. On Saturday, I pick up some packages of bees and build up some hives. It feels good to get back with the bees. :-D
Regards,
Tucker1
Topic: Spring Inspection & Split (Read 1096 times)