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Author Topic: 'Accidental' split.  (Read 1296 times)

Offline Spear

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'Accidental' split.
« on: April 13, 2014, 02:31:34 pm »
Was in the last few of my hives today and wanted to do the transfer into the new hive of one hive that I could not do a few weeks ago because there was brood in both boxes. I had out a queen excluder on so that I could determine which of the two boxes she was in. It has about 3 weeks so I take a look today and find brood in the top box. 'excellent!' I think and start transferring  the frames into the new box. All is going well and the frames from the top box are in the new hive, remove the empty top box...
Now I can get into the bottom box and on the 3rd frame I find brood! :shock:! It's capped but could it still be from before the excluder was placed on? I don't know! Anyway it is too late to put the hive all back together and the bottom box has smaller frames that wont hang in the new hive even if there was space... So just split!

I put the new hive in the place of the old hive and move the old hive to into the corner. I then give the 'new' hive a super - maybe they don't need a super yet but why not - and close up. The 'old' hive I put a brood box from the hive I intend to move them into eventually - it has only foundation frames so they will need time to draw out the combs before I can move the queen in. OH, I found some queen cells in the next hive I inspected and gave the 'old' hive 2 of these - I never saw the queen but there was less and possibly older brood in this box so I'm guessing that the queen was 'upstairs' and is now in the 'new' hive leaving the 'old' hive queenless.
I also gave a queen cell to my known queenless hive even though I think it might have a laying worker.
Oh on the topic of laying worker if I shake this hive out a few feet away from the hive will all or most of the worker except the laying worker return to the original hive or do I have to get them to move into other hives?

Sorry about the long post but thanks for reading and any comments you might have.  :lol:

Offline sc-bee

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Re: 'Accidental' split.
« Reply #1 on: April 13, 2014, 07:41:22 pm »
Whew ..... could you break that down a little .... may just be me :-D

I think this may be one question. The hive with the older brood in one part and eggs in the other. You should look for eggs in the part with the older brood. Is it possible the older brood was left older after 21 days well...... maybe since worker brood hatches in 21 days and was it possibly drone brood? D4one takes a little longer. I imagine the queen is in the part with eggs.....  

Edited: Ok after reading again I think I am a little clearer .... The new hive is the one with eggs right which has the queen. You left it in the original location is that correct. How weak is it? It has a viable queen. Does it need the retuning forages or the split with the capped brood. You put a cell in the box with the older capped brood, right? Well.... it will be awhile before it gets any new foragers. May need to watch these and adjust location between the two according to strength.

As far as the laying worker .... trying adding open brood and the queen cell can't hurt. Sometimes it takes more than one round of brood to right a laying worker. Shake out can be tricky. I have had them work but I do them a lot further away than a few feet. Why do you think you have a laying worker? Do you see the signs of one eg. more than one egg in a cell and not in the bottom of the cell (stuck on side of cell). Nothing but drone brood no worker brood?

I hope I got this right and it helps some .... time for someone else to weigh in :)
« Last Edit: April 13, 2014, 07:54:58 pm by sc-bee »
John 3:16

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: 'Accidental' split.
« Reply #2 on: April 14, 2014, 12:18:09 am »
The only question that I see is about laying workers. The only time that I shakeout a hive just a few feet away, is when I remove the hive and let the bees move into other hives. The other hives will not allow a laying worker move into there hive. When I want to reset laying worker hive, which I had to do on my first hive, I took the hive 300 feet away and shook it out making sure none of the bees remained in the hive. I then took it back to the original site and put it back together. The idea is that the laying workers cannot fly back and have to walk. They also have never left the hive and are not oriented to so they do not find there way. Most of the workers are old enough to find their was.

Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Offline RHBee

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Re: 'Accidental' split.
« Reply #3 on: April 14, 2014, 01:29:10 am »
Spear,
Layng worker is most easily determined by multiple eggs and eggs layed on the cell walls. Some new queens will lay double eggs but always on the bottom of the cell.

When using a queen excluder to isolate a queens general location the trick is to look for eggs not brood. The presence of eggs indicates the body that contains the queen.

Splits require the resources to raise a queen. Eggs or fresh hatched larvae. No need to locate the queen.

Michael Bush bee math

I hope this helps.

Later,
Ray

 

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