So we had a big bee day yesterday. Moved three hives that were just brood boxes and put supers on two (the last needs a super as well but I don't have one ready yet)
At our home yard we have hive A and B. B has been going gangbusters pretty much all winter, 20x the entrance activity compared to A. Yesterday we decided to inspect both and swap their locations to boos As population.
A was going OK - brood box with small patches of brood surrounded by honey and pollen, super with no capped frames but lots of open nectar. B was insane! I've never seen so many bees in a hive, and it's got two supers and a brood box. The first super had 10 deep frames of fully capped honey, and the top super had 10 frames of about half capped honey.
The brood box was packed with bees and that queen's brood is crazy - wall to wall brood on most frames, lots of pollen in the outside frames. We decided to split as she looked like she didn't have much space to lay and there was a bit of drone brood around the place. We had a 5 frame nuc so I gave them one frame of honey, one frame pollen and sealed brood, the frame the old queen was on with open brood, and two foundation frames. Pattern was HBBFF. Shook some extra bees into it, and sit it a few steps away from the parent hive with a leafy branch over the front.
Swapped A and B an there's lots of activity at both hives now, but not much at the nuc. Sorry for the long post but my questions are:
1. did I do the split right? Should I worry there isn't much nuc activity? I really don't want to lose this queen!
2. Hive B is now queenless - what's my next move? When should I check for queen cells, or a laying queen?