# Split Gone Wrong



## magromarkbee (May 24, 2014)

Hi. On April 14th I split inspected my commercial beehive (hive 1) having 1 commercial brood with 10 frames and 2 super with 11 frames each. It was overflowing with bees and being a beginner I sort of panicked and brought a Nuc and took 6 frames from the brood thinking that I would avoid swarming instead of adding another super.

None of the frames had swarm cells or at least I couldn’t see one since it was totally covered in bees. On May 12th I inspected the two hives and found that the original hive (hive 1) was queenless with no laying workers, no eggs and 3 attempts to build a queen cell and the nuc was queen right with no queen cells and a healthy laying pattern. 

My conclusion was that during the split I carried the queen from the original home (hive 1) to a new home (poor queen) and somehow the bees did not manage to raise a queen. So the next day I took a brood frame from the nuc having freshly laid eggs, brushed off all bees and inserted it into the original hive in the hope that the bees raise an emergency queen.

What’s next…?

I was thinking of moving the nuc frames into a commercial hive (Hive 2) so that once the initial hive (Hive 1) swarms I would have the equipment to be able to catch the swarm. Would that be a good idea or should I leave the nuc alone and think of buying a new nuc hive? Is there a high probability of having a second swarm?


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