Advice re failed split

[Olivia9801]

Two weeks ago I carried out a split as I found what I thought were supercedure cells in my main hive. I found these in opening them for the first time this year.

This was my first split and it hasn't worked. The hive is totally devoid of bees but my query relates to the frames I placed in with the cell in this new split hive?
There are quite a few with lots of sealed brood and stores. I know the stores won't go off, but am worried about the sealed brood as they will rot.

What would you do with these frames?

Incidentally, my initial thought that there were supercedure cells may have been right, as the following week I thought the hive was queenless. Another bee colleague more experienced than me also had a check and thought the same. Although there was open larvae visible on the first inspection, there was no sign of eggs. The next inspection showed just sealed brood and no open larvae.

I wish I hadn't carried out the split now, as i feel the bees knew they were queeenless, and I feel I should have left them by not splitting them. I have now had to merge them with another colony in the meantime.

I would appreciate your advice regarding these frames.

Regards

 

[enrico]

This early in the year I tend to put a queen cell in a nuc with a frame of brood and food. It is just a back up. If the cell is duff you can always reunite. Then I let the main hive just get on with it. The only thing I do with frames with dead brood in is scrape it back to the foundation where the brood is and throw it away. If you try and separate the wax with heat it stinks. Don't give up, these things happen and we learn lessons that we forget next time the same thing happens!!!!
E

 

[Little John]

It may not be relevant, for as you say an experienced beekeeper checked those cells - but during my first inspection of this year I found quite a number of what appeared at first sight to be supercedure cells. They were far more advanced than 'play cups', but on flicking their sides open each one was found to be empty. I've never seen 'play cups' (if indeed that's what they were) quite so advanced before. I suppose they could have been genuine supercedure cells which were later abandonded - as drones are only just beginning to emerge in reasonable numbers in this area - but then, all my queens are reasonably young, so there shouldn't be any reason to supercede them. Curious.

Generally speaking, I wouldn't attempt any kind of procedure which involves queen-mating so early in the season - but then, in Cornwall you are ahead of the rest of us, weather-wise ...

Bad luck - that's the nature of 'gaining experience' - it invariably involves snafu's. Keep trying !

Re: the brood frames - I simply return them and let the bees deal with the problem. If the brood frames are still reasonably 'fresh', then they'll ingest whatever they want, and discard the rest. I do the same with 'dead-outs', providing there's no sign of any disease of course.
LJ

 

[drex]

The hive is totally devoid of bees

Regards

When making a split it is essential to ensure each side of the split is viable. In particular when keeping the split in the same apiary to ensure that the part that was moved does not lose too many bees " flying home" , topping up a day later with young bees if needed.

 

[Olivia9801]

Thanks for your replies.

I think that most of them did infact fly back to their mother hive. Initially I felt I may have killed an awful lot of bees as they were taken over to the new (split) hive with the queen cell. However I think looking back at when I made my first inspection and found these cells, the queen had probably died by then.

If this happens again, I'm going to leave well alone in case it's a link to the colony being queenless, or at least look at it as being an indication of it being queenless, and then look for the obvious signs she's gone?

It has taught me quite a lot, so some good has come out of this failed split!

I just got to hope that my effort to merge this queenless colony with my stronger hive works out. Only carried this out on Saturday, so will wait and see?

Thanks again.

Regards

 

[alldigging]

Do a bit of reading in the meantime

http://www.wbka.com/library/library-documents/

There Are Queen Cells In My Hive (Wally Shaw)
is well worth a read as are the other documents linked on that page.