# Problem with my first split.



## apigard (Sep 28, 2021)

according to your description, I would say that they are fake queens, if there are more eggs laid in one cell.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I dont know what is meant by fake queens. No tears your observations and time lines seem unusual and not exact enough to play detective. Might as well wait a few days to see if brood is capped appropriately for the cells they are in. The multiple eggs, larvae *could* be from a young queen, or they could be laying workers. Laying workers can also start queen cells on worker laid eggs but they wont develop.


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## charliez (Sep 30, 2021)

I'm new to this, but going through classes and learning. One thing I learned is the hive will make queen cells all the time. Kinda like practicing. Not all the time as in all day long but on occasion. You can crush them, but they could also be sensing an issue with the current queen as well so if that's the case then crushing is a bad idea. They can't tell you that in any way other than thier actions so what do you do? Watch and keep a close eye on things was the answer the instructor gave on that issue. Hope that helps.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

charliez said:


> I'm new to this, but going through classes and learning. One thing I learned is the hive will make queen cells all the time. Kinda like practicing. Not all the time as in all day long but on occasion. You can crush them, but they could also be sensing an issue with the current queen as well so if that's the case then crushing is a bad idea. They can't tell you that in any way other than thier actions so what do you do? Watch and keep a close eye on things was the answer the instructor gave on that issue. Hope that helps.


Generally good advice. Tearing down queen cells can get you in trouble. It also may not accomplish what you think you are doing; prevent a swarm. There are situations where our messing around leads the bees to wrongly thinking their queen is bad and you can thwart them by tearing down cells but it takes a fair bit of experience and detective work to recognize those situations.
*When is it OK to tear down Queen cells* could make a long thread! No, _one simple answer_, to that one.


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## charliez (Sep 30, 2021)

Main disclaimer for me...I'm still learning. I don't even have any bees yet, just a hood, a smoker, and some boxes that are almost finished being painted. Not the inside. I can repeat what the pros that did the classes I went to said and I can lurk over conversations here.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

No tears said:


> Hi all. I did a split on my hive about a month or so ago. All was looking great. Queens cells and eggs about a week and a half after she hatched. On inspection today I found capped queen cells in the swarm position at the bottom. There is uncapped brood and some random capped brood but the only eggs I found were in one small spot and there were multiple eggs and some tiny lava in pair in a couple of cells. Laying worker? Will the queen cells be viable? Anyone seen this before.


were the cells in the take away part of the split or the part that stayed in the old location?
if in the old location did some of the field bees come back and make it crowded?
when I have seen this it was crowing at the old location as all the field bees can back .
IE 20 frame in 2 Deep, you take one away, 4 frames of bees fly back and now we are crowded.
presume some fly back and plan space accordingly.

I presume you kept the old queen, can give some eggs to the "funny" split , from her, and see if they try to make a queen, indicating they are queen less.
I cannot tell where you are from, if in the land down under there is time to fix this , if in the US or Canada, Maybe put it back together as a newspaper combine. Do a vigorous inspection for virgin queen or cell as the combine could result in old queen being killed by the virgin and she then fails to mate and you are late in the year and queenless.

GG


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

Non-keeper (yet) so take this with a grain of salt. It's my understanding that laying workers may not be able to reach the bottom of a cell, so multiple eggs in the _bottom_ of a cell are more than likely an indication of a new queen. Your timing seems to support that.


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## No tears (Sep 30, 2021)

I went back into the hive today and it appears that there uncapped brood is drone brood in worker cells so it appears there has been a laying worker. There were no eggs that I could find today. I looked in one of the queen cells and all it had was an unhatched egg and royal jelly. I have put a frame of uncapped brood from my strong hive to see if they will try to make a queen. I’ll give them a few days to see if their building cells if not is it possible to reunite them with the original hive and wait till I can get a mated queen to try again with a split.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Sounds pretty conclusive of laying workers. It commonly takes 3 frames before they will start cells but if they are building cells themselves they may accept sooner. Introducing a queen to a laying worker is usually considered to be a death sentence for the queen but is more likely to work with a push in cage introduction. I think you should do a bunch of reading on laying workers. After it has gone on for a long time, the remaining workers have a limited life span left so they are not of much value. If recombining, precautions need to be taken. They are some risk to receiving colony's queen.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

Some good stuff here (see the "Laying Worker" section). Also, this vid has some interesting stuff, including laying worker situations:


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## No tears (Sep 30, 2021)

Thanks for the link I’ve watched two videos on laying workers both done by University’s. It looks like combining is the only way out.


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## apigard (Sep 28, 2021)

I will expose my way of dealing with fake queens or, as you say, lay workers, a little further from the hives I shake the frames with bees on some surface and carry the frames where there is a brood of laying workers (fake queens) for melting, because in those places where they laying brood there will always be drone brood,
when the workers return and arrange them in the hives, the false queens no longer have anyone to feed with royal jelly and they stop laying eggs.


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## No tears (Sep 30, 2021)

Well I did the recombine as instructed by both of the university utube videos instructions late yesterday afternoon. To my horror all the newspaper is out the front of the hive this morning. So they basically reunited straight away. Now I’ll have to wait and see what has happened to my strong hive. Can’t change things now so I’ll give them a week and see what damage has been done. I’m thinking fly mesh would be a much better option. I’ll update in a week as to the status of the queen.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

The way I understand it is if they spend all their time cleaning the newspaper out of the hive, they forget to fight. That's how it seemed on the one we did this year anyway.


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## No tears (Sep 30, 2021)

Update. I was able to get into the hive on Saturday and all seems to have worked. The frames in the box I re combined are all full of new brood and eggs. Nicely laid the way a true queen does. So it looks like the queen has survived the combine. I have a queen coming this week and will do a split again this weekend.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

I was going to say "maybe wait till spring?" but then I saw the flag there.


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## No tears (Sep 30, 2021)

This was the same week as the winter solstice here in Sydney. It spring now and we are having a nectar flow that is unbelievable.


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## No tears (Sep 30, 2021)

There was a picture with my last post but it doesn’t seem to have posted.


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