I did a split about a month ago. It wasn’t building up too fast so I added a frame of capped brood from one of my strong hives. They made a queen cell, she emerged, went on her mating flight and came back and started laying. All appeared to be going well and I moved them into a 8-frame deep brood box. I did an inspection about five days ago. I didn’t see the queen and I only saw a small amount of eggs. I went in and looked again yesterday and did not see any eggs nor did I find the queen but I did find four queen cells along the bottom of one of the frames. It almost seems like they may have swarmed but it seems a little late for that now. The other reason I don’t think they did is because the numbers of bees in the hive did not drop off drastically. So at this point I think I am going to let happen what is going to happen. Hopefully a strong queen will emerge and mate and the hive will be back in business. Otherwise I will end up combining them with another hive.
If it was a walk away split it takes 28~32 days for queen to lay. Depending on the weather. With a little luck she is still there. Is there any capped brood near remaining queen cells? There should be. The queen emerges 5 days earlier than worker bees. If no brood the queen cells are probably no good. Give it another frame of brood and check in a week.
Give them time for a queen to mate and start laying John. Nature doesn’t always happen when we want it to. So far you have done what I would do, and I seldom see the queen in my inspections but just look for proof she is there and active.
Regards
I didn’t notice any evidence of them. The more I think about it was closer to ten days since the last inspection. The capped brood that hasn’t emerged was from the frame that I added. There were some young larvae not capped on the frame too. Just an odd hive I guess. I have about a month and a half to two months left of weather for the girls to collect nectar and pollen. Fall flow and that’s it then right into winter. I have taken all of my supers off at the end of August and let me store anything they gather in September to fill up the hive for winter.
@Bubba the queen was laying. Just not very much. I noticed there wasn’t a lot of pollen in the hive so I gave them pollen patties and they devoured it. I put in another one when I looked at the hive two days ago. I am guessing I either rolled the queen or something else happened.
As I said John, you are doing it as I would approach it. If after another week if you can’t find eggs I would add a frame of eggs and if the hive is queenless they will make a new queen. If you add a frame of brood to make a queen leave the hive alone for 4 weeks then there should be a new queen and laying well by then.
Regards
Update: Well none of the cells that were made produced a laying queen so I ended up using the newspaper method and joined the two colonies together. I got a new queen and put her into the other weak hive I had. She has been in a little over two weeks and is laying like a champ. With the boost of bees from the other hive that should hopefully help get them thru the winter.