# North-Central Texas TBH - Too Late To Split?



## SWAT253 (May 11, 2015)

About 11 days ago I did a full inspection of my 24 frame TBH (14 bars working) and noticed that the two heaviest honey bars were about 75% depleted and there were very few new brood cells. The queen was business as usual, or so it appeared, but I didn't see any eggs or uncapped larvae. The inspection was about midday and there were fewer bees in the hive, but I attributed that to foragers being out in the field. 

2 days ago, I didn't see the usual amount of traffic at the entrance, so I took another look inside. I didn't find the queen after two trips thru the bars. I always make sure I know where the queen is when I close the gaps in the bars, and the last time I saw her, she was mid-bottom of a brood comb. What I did find was 8-10 queen cells with large larvae inside and a few empty cups. There was plenty of room in the section I'm using, with room for more expansion - crowding was not an issue. I've accepted that they could have swarmed for whatever reason or that they got rid of her if she wasn't producing. This was a swarm-trapped colony and I didn't know the queen's age/history. She worked like a champ for the 6 months that I had her...

My dilemma is whether to split this hive, since I now have so many capped queen cells and about 75-80% of my original colony to raise two new queens. I had already built a 15 bar TBH as a starter and it's just waiting to be put into use. I don't know when they started building the emergency cells, probably 9-10 days ago, but I expect the virgin queens will hatch within the next week. If I split, it probably needs to be within the next day or so.

*Is it too late in the year to be going into fall / winter with a brand new colony*? The pollen is still coming in and they're storing honey again. Fall is warm in this part of Texas and it's not uncommon to have 70-80 degree days until late November. I hate to split if it will weaken the colony heading into winter, which usually doesn't get below freezing here until late December or January. 

*Note:* Against my better judgement, but after reading an "expert's" article discouraging the feeding of syrup in the summer, I stopped filling the feeder bottles about 2 weeks prior to this issue...

Thoughts & constructive comments appreciated.


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

SWAT253 said:


> About 11 days ago I did a full inspection of my 24 frame TBH (14 bars working) and noticed that the two heaviest honey bars were about 75% depleted and there were very few new brood cells. The queen was business as usual, or so it appeared, but I didn't see any eggs or uncapped larvae. The inspection was about midday and there were fewer bees in the hive, but I attributed that to foragers being out in the field.
> 
> 2 days ago, I didn't see the usual amount of traffic at the entrance, so I took another look inside. I didn't find the queen after two trips thru the bars. I always make sure I know where the queen is when I close the gaps in the bars, and the last time I saw her, she was mid-bottom of a brood comb. What I did find was 8-10 queen cells with large larvae inside and a few empty cups. There was plenty of room in the section I'm using, with room for more expansion - crowding was not an issue. I've accepted that they could have swarmed for whatever reason or that they got rid of her if she wasn't producing. This was a swarm-trapped colony and I didn't know the queen's age/history. She worked like a champ for the 6 months that I had her...
> 
> ...


I'm prone to think you've got a supercedure underway, I'd be inclined to knock them down to 3 Q cells and let them do their own thing. 

You apparently missed eggs that were there on the earlier inspection as evidenced by the queen cells. Swarm queens are likely last years (or older) and supercedure is fairly common - her swarming yet again and in the fall... not so much. 

14 bars is a good size to overwinter on, 7 bars is fairly minimal and I wouldn't plan on much more new comb getting drawn this year. It's pretty late in the season to get queens mated (though it appears to be that we'll stay quite warm for awhile). You might think to "hedge your bets" and split with the hope to double your chances for a good mated queen (and then combine if 1 fails) but, it's hard to get a strong split in a single yard as there will be a lot of drift back to the original hive (and you don't have time to wait for it to build).

While it's not too late to split, lacking a mated queen puts you a month behind the curve. I'm strengthening some small colonies and requeening but I'm not relying on open mated queens this time of year. I'd also hold off on feeding a bit and see if they aren't putting on stores during the brood break - feeding may work against you at this point and result in the brood area getting backfilled.


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## SWAT253 (May 11, 2015)

Chuck - Thanks for your input. Since this is my first hive, I'm wanting to give it the best chance to pull through until Spring. I've been studying the possibility of rearing queens and wanted to start some nucs for expansion and to get some friends into beekeeping next Spring. When I saw all the queen cells, I was presented with the quandary of wasting new queens or taking a chance on starting a new colony sooner than I had anticipated.

I will probably let nature take its course and trust the colony to support their new queen. In any case, over the next few days, I will get to witness a lot of new things that I have only read about or watched in someone's videos! At the very least, I will know the queen's age!


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## SWAT253 (May 11, 2015)

Well, looks like my calculations were a few days off. I inspected the hive yesterday to see how the queen cells were looking and they were all gone - just a few nubs that were being chewed up by the bees. The bees had already filled in the area where the queen cells had been with honey. I did a quick pass thru the bars but didn't spot the new queen. I'm hoping she was out being promiscuous. The hive had an unusually heavy fragrance of honey and the bars were significantly heavier than last week. The returning pollen foragers seemed to increase 3-4 times the rate of last week. I'll check again in a few days - can't wait to spot the new queen.


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## SWAT253 (May 11, 2015)

Here she is - the surviving Queen is busy laying in just about any cell she can find. At this point, she's laying in the middle of a heavy honey bar. I guess she'll establish a better pattern once she finds the empty brood combs. I'm just glad to find her and glad she was mated before fall. Nature... Gotta love it!


https://farm1.staticflickr.com/624/22106955771_bf5a139e40_z_d.jpg


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