Elusive queen

[alberturner]

Hi - first time so please bear with me.
I really needed to change my old brood comb that came with my new hive (national) last year and do something about the spacers. I also wanted to change to a bigger brood box. There was evidence of the queen laying in the
old box (plenty of stores)but I just could not find her. Rightly or wrongly I put a Commercial brood box on top of the old one with new foundation, with no queen excluder.
The foundation was quickly drawn and the queen moved up and started laying in the new box. I still could not find her. I then moved the new box,put a queen exluder underneath and gently swept the bees from the old frames into it. I ended up with floor (I use open mesh by the way) -old brood box - queen excluder- new brood box - queen excluder - super.
Unfortunately I was unable to check for 2 weeks because of weather. Did a check yesterday and found :-

Old brood box - A few remaining bees to emerge. Stores depleted.

New brood box - Very good brood patterns - from freshly laid eggs to emerging bees. Bit short on stores. Three left frames being drawn. Two capped queen cells (half way down frame). Still can not find queen, she is obviously there (in the new brood box)becuase of the quantity of freshly laid eggs. I had to quickly close the hive becuase of a heavy shower approaching.
Am feeding today.
It seems to me that they are soon going to run out of room in the commercial.
I would like to end up with another hive ( I have complete spare). Bearing in mind I can not find the queen any observations or advice on my next move?

 

[oliver90owner]

First, welcome to the forum. Now your bees.

No particular problem here, for the box change.

Another week and you will be able to remove the bottom box - mission accomplished as far as the comb/box change.

Increase.

These two queen cells are supercedure cells? Seems very much like that.

To get to two colonies from your bees you need to split them (evenly) into two nuc sized units and leave one queen cell in each half. Job done. Easy to say, not quite so easy to do

The complications are where the two queen cells are situated, how long before emergence and sharing the bees sensibly (one will be on a new site and will lose it's flying bees). You may need to lose some of the remaining capped brood in the bottom box but you could transfer some of those frames temporarily to the splits, if appropriate (especially if or when you know where the queen is).

If using your two commercial boxes for the splits, arrange for a dummy or better still a divider to keep the bees cosy with just a one or two foundation frames to draw at first.

There are plenty of options/alternatives, so I would suggest you draw up a plan (as a flow sheet) on paper to make sure it will work and any operational problems likely and their solution. Extrapolating to the next couple of weeks should allow for changes to the plan as things may not progress as per the basic idea.

Regards, RAB

 

[alberturner]

Many thanks.
You have confirmed what I was more or less thinking and now have a bit more confidence to put a plan into action asap. Such operations are a bit daunting if you haven't done them before. I love flow charts , trying to remember advice , text, etc is much easier if you draw up one to follow, and adaptable which I found you have to be as the bees don't seem to have read the rules!!!! let alone follow them.
Let's see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
Regards.AT.