No brood in any of hives

[Pyritte]

Hello again!
On the 21/5 having capped queen cells and no signs of queen in either of my hives, I did an AS on both putting 2 capped cells in each of the now 4 brood boxes. Few days later went in and took each one down to one capped cell (so I thought). Left them alone, few days ago one swarmed, managed to catch it and quick trip to buy a new hive, they seem settled. Went in today and looked at the 4 brood boxes, 3 had 2 empty queen cells so missed those swarms. One hive I saw a queen but in the others I didn't, but all 4 had no brood!
Is it a bit early to be expecting a laying queen as they are allless than 3 weeks old?

 

[Smorning]

I had a similar experience but it took almost four weeks before I saw eggs and lavae after the split, I was getting nervous and had mated queens in reserve but in the end all worked out well. If nothing is observed soon you will need to consider what to do but a bit of patience and nail biting is part of the process. I was told beginners sometimes act far too early and although I knew this it's exactly what I did !

 

[tonel]

Am also waiting on a new queen to start doing her thing, been 3 weeks and starting to get a bit worried. Going to give her one more week and if still nothing will put in a test frame.

 

[Cazza]

No need to panic yet. A three week wait is not unusual. When do you think the queens emerged?
I usually work this out, add three weeks and leave them alone til then.
Cazza

 

[oliver90owner]

First thing. No queen, no A/S. Simple as that. Seems like they had already naturally swarmed already, so far too late to artificially swarm them.

You should have chosen an open cell, if they were available and only intending to leave one queen to emerge. You could then be confident of when to return, before emergence, to ensure no others could be built, although you may have missed one, of course.

Instead of finishing with two colonies from each of your originals, each having about half the number of bees in each, you now only have around a quarter or less, of the bees in each split - so very much weakened and it was surprising that a cast would again possibly weaken that part by yet another 50%. You now possibly havehave one nuc sized colony and four weak nuc sized colonies. Not good in June, if the wasps start to be a nuisance early this season. The only redeeming factor may have been there were supers involved. If only single brood boxes, you may have lost around 65% of your original bees with the remaining spread over 5 colonies!

I hope you have your new colonies suitably dummied down (or fitted with dividers) to help them get established, if in full sized boxes. So far June weather has not been that kind to the bees. We don't really know whether the weather will improve or whether the weather won't.

All less than three weeks old? Do your sums again. Draw a simple time line. It is not even three weeks since you intervened/inter-----. I know that statement must be correct, but it is not a true reflection of their real age.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Hello again!
On the 21/5 having capped queen cells and no signs of queen in either of my hives, I did an AS on both

As RAB. NO queen no AS
These swarmed hives are now minus half their bees so you shouldn't have split them even further.
If your hive has swarmed you have to make every effort to prevent cast swarms and further reduction in the colony by thinning out the queen cells to one or two.
There are various ways of doing this.
This is a uniquely useful document that all beginners should commit to memory, or at least have in their pocket at inspection time