# Split in Horizontal Hive



## Docsmaple (Aug 13, 2018)

I had a two box deep colony that I split and put the queen with brood, nectar, pollen, pollen patty, and 1:1 sugar water in one half of my horizontal hive. On the other side, I did the same thing but bought a queen and placed the queen cage that had a sugar plug in it for the other side. I did this two weeks ago. Last week, in the side I attempted to introduce a queen, no evidence of a queen. No queen, no brood, no eggs, no larvae. There was a sealed queen cell on the bottom of one of the frames. Five days later (today), I checked. The previous queen cell is gone, but the same thing, No queen, brood, eggs, or larvae. Lots of pollen and nectar. Now there are two small queen cells (not drone brood). One is in the middle of the frame like a supercedure cell and the bottom of a different frame. At this point, it has been queenless for two weeks. Do I try to buy a queen, combine the queenless colony with the queenright colony, leave it alone? I have room for 32 double deep frames in my horizontal hive and am no where close to using all of the hive. Do you think the introduced queen went into the wrong side of the hive? does this happen with horizontal hives?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Docsmaple said:


> ... does this happen with horizontal hives?


Your issues are not issues of a horizontal hive.
It is just a queen intro problems - a very general problem.
Who knows what the issue is, but one detail is missing in the problem statement.
Is there a bee-proof separation board between the halves?
Because there must be one if you want your project to succeed.

I don't even see what is your goal.
Expand?
Then go ahead and expand.
Today is only June 5th - just start over again if this matters to you.

As for me, I never buy anything and just do things from my own resources (for as long as I have the resources - e.g. eggs, brood, bees, queens).


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## Docsmaple (Aug 13, 2018)

There are two bee proof separation boards in place with a 1' space between the two colonies. I would like to have two fully functional colonies in the horizontal hive going into winter this years if possible.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Docsmaple said:


> There are two bee proof separation boards in place with a 1' space between the two colonies. I would like to have two fully functional colonies in the horizontal hive going into winter this years if possible.


That looks fine.

Just start over.
There is a plenty of time to start a small nuc using the existing resources and having it built up for the winter.
Having two functional colonies is a much better place to be (vs. only one).

Yes, I understand with only having 1-2 hives many small issues (like a failed split) seem big.
Well, these are still small problems.
Try again.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

I found out the hard way that division boards in divided hives not only need to be bee-proof, but also gas-tight - because pheromones from one half of the hive can affect the other half. Unfortunately, making gas-tight boxes isn't that easy - and so I've eventually adopted the practice of one box, one colony, whenever a colony is not queen-right.
Having said that, other people seem to do ok with divided boxes - so it's down to each individual to see what works for them.



> There are two bee proof separation boards in place with a 1' space between the two colonies.


That sounds about as good as it's possible to achieve with movable dividers (much better than just having one) - so if you have viable q/cells present, I'd be inclined to wait it out and see what happens.
Good luck
LJ


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## Docsmaple (Aug 13, 2018)

thanks for the posts. I'll check the queen cells this weekend and if nothing good is going on, I'll probably take some eggs/larvae and see if I can get some queen cells reared.


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## beechet (Jan 4, 2018)

I converted a 31 frame horizontal to a double deep and started 2 colonies in it from swarms. They have both exploded with bees and I got worried the 31 frames would not be enough and removed the smaller colony. The experience is never far from my mind and I have decided that the extra pheromones boost the hive a great deal and will absolutely agree that the divider boards must be very tight for it to work and don't believe you can ever do that unless you are building new, or at least I didn't think I could. Mine were tight and I even pushed burlap in the cracks but still the bees crossed.


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