# My first split - bees in new hive are acting drunk???



## Bunyabees (May 17, 2017)

I bought my first top bar hive in October last year and despite a pretty average season it has done reasonably well. I've harvested enough to keep us in honey in the first year and expanded the hive to 21 bars from the initial 5. I built a second top bar hive over the last month or so and have today done a 50/50 split. The existing queen is now in the new hive. The hives are side by side, so I know I am not going to have any foragers in the new hive initially as all these bees will likely return to the old hive. A couple of hours after the split there are a few bees leaving the new hive and none returning.

I am a little concerned with one thing that I have observed since the split. In the new hive I have observed from hearing and also seeing (through the mesh bottom - I haven't bothered with a window) that bees a regularly falling from the comb and landing on the bottom, often on their backs. At that point they seem a bit dazed - but I am assuming they are then making their ways back to the combs. Both worker and some drones are doing this. I am hoping there is nothing about the new hive that is making them ill. It is painted with a fairly natural wood oil and only on the outside. It has been a couple of weeks since I painted and I had the hive outside off gassing anything all last week. Most of the hive is pine, but I did make the follower boards out of marine ply - so there will be glues in that.

I am hoping that the reasons is more related to them consuming honey - but I have no experience with this. I guess time will tell. Any ideas?

I'm a fairly new member and a pretty new beekeeper also - so all assistance appreciated 

Here is a pic of the new hive - not in final location:











Cheers


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## Bunyabees (May 17, 2017)

I should have said - I am letting the bees produce their own queen, at least that is the hope.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You should watch a slow motion movie of bees coming in and out of the hive and you'll get a feel for how actually awkward they are. Running into each other, crash landing on the landing board etc. I think bees are actually klutzes and it's not unusual for them to fall.


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## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

The first thing that I would suspect with any critter acting ultraclumsy is toxic exposure. Are they really behaving any different than the other hive? What's happened in the intervening 7 days?


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Michael Bush said:


> I think bees are actually klutzes and it's not unusual for them to fall.


I spend hours watching my bees come and go. This statement is spot on. I couldn't begin to say how many times in an hour they crash into each other on landing and flip other bees on their back. It is really quite entertaining to watch.


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## Bunyabees (May 17, 2017)

Thanks for the responses. The bees in the new hive - which has the old queen - are doing fine. After the first week I was quite concerned that there were not enough bees in the hive after all the foragers returned to the original hive. To assist I moved another bar of capped brood to the new hive.

As for the old hive left queen-less in the split, the bees did their thing and made a number of queen cells within a couple of days. As far as I am aware, the first virgin queen emerged on around 14 September (day 13) as I saw her roaming around through my observation window. We went away on a holiday the next day and only returned last night (30 September). Today (day 30) I went through the hive looking for the new queen which in theory should have mated and be laying eggs. I could not see the queen which was a little concerning as I usually have no problem spotting the queen (I spotted my old queen in the new hive when I also inspected that today). I'm pretty sure I saw some eggs and some larvae, but was not extensive. There was quite a bit of pollen. My eyesight is not fantastic so I took a couple of magnified pictures during the inspection to look at afterwards, but they are pretty crap with the iPhone focussing on the top of the cells instead of within. However in the photos I am pretty sure I can spot some eggs and some larvae. The concern is that in some cells it looks a little bit like there may be multiple eggs, pointing to laying worker/s, however it might just be reflection (hard to tell because of picture quality). To be safe, when I inspected the new hive with the old queen, I took a bar containing some eggs (it also had some advanced larvae and capped brood - as I didn't have the luxury of having a bar with just eggs and very young larvae) and transferred it to the old hive.

Am I correct in the theory that if the old hive is not queen right then queens cells will again be produced. If they aren't produced then I have a laying queen. If no queen cells are produced I'll go into the hive again in a fortnight with the hope of seeing capped worker brood and more eggs and larvae on the frames that were already in the hive before I added the extra one today.


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## Bunyabees (May 17, 2017)

A couple more pics.


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## Eikel (Mar 12, 2014)

30 days is still a +/- number and it sometimes takes her a few extra days to get in the full swing of things, a few cells with multiple eggs in the bottom of cells isn't a problems. As you said, not the best pictures but it did appear to be single eggs in the bottom of the cell. It also appeared some of the cell could have had royal jelly but too tough to actually tell. New queens can also be a bit bashful and tend to hide. I'd give it a few more days, she doesn't read the same publications as we do.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Yes, you are correct. After day two, check to see if queen cups are started. No cups, you have a queen in there somewhere. Your pics did look like eggs in some of the cells to me also but some of the spots look like light shining through the cell. In another day or two, any small larvae should be big enough to see easily. Good luck.


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## Gumpy (Mar 30, 2016)

I see eggs in the bottoms of the cells in those photos. Laying worker will be scattered all over the cell bottom, walls, etc. I'd say you have a good mated queen in there. Give it a week and see what the capped brood looks like.


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## Bunyabees (May 17, 2017)

Thanks for the replies. I have an update on this which is not what I hoped for. Although it is still too early for queen cells on the transferred bar, a couple of hours after my inspection I was looking through the observation window and noticed some queen cells on the edges of a couple of existing bars which the bees appear to be feeding. When doing the inspection I'd seen the used cells from the original split and tore these out, but I didn't see these smaller cells which are still being built. This would seem to indicate that I had a new queen for a short while but then she has come to some sort of grief just a couple of days back (at least I know it wasn't me who killed her). Will just have to sit back and let the bees do their thing. I bit of a set back, but **** happens. I guess the transferred bar will now have a different purpose, being supplementation of numbers for the period between now and when (hopefully) a new queen starts building the colony. Will be interesting to see if they build some new queen cells on that bar as well - I suspect they will, but chances are they'll be later hatchers and be killed by an earlier hatching queen.
Cheers


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Do keep us posted on the results.


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## Bunyabees (May 17, 2017)

A bit of an update on this. It looks like the couple of incomplete queen cells on the existing bars that I observed through the window don't have larvae in them as the bees have not continued to build them nor are they servicing them. These may have been left over from the original split and may be the remnants of what I tore off during my inspection, with the bees just cleaning up afterwards.

From what I can see through the observation window there are no cells being built on the bar that I transferred from my other hive after my inspection. I'll do a quick inspection in a few days to confirm that is the case. Hopefully these are all indications of a functioning queen in the hive - albeit one that was elusive during my inspection and which was still getting into full swing with egg laying.

Cheers


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## Bunyabees (May 17, 2017)

Being the impatient person I am, seeing that the bees were cross combing an empty bar I inserted during the last inspection, I took the opportunity to go into the give way too soon since my last inspection to sort the cross comb early and see what is going on with the queen. While I only went part way through the hive, the good news is that I observed capped worker cells, larvae at various stages and best of all the new queen. She's a nice looking specimen and from what I could see the laying pattern was pretty good - particularly with the larvae with all cells in those areas filled. Looks like its been a case of new beekeeper needless concern. I now wish I'd not moved over that other frame as its leaving my other colony a bit weaker - but I'll leave it be now. Thanks to everybody for their observations. Cheers*


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