# Making splits with caged queens



## TWall

It is hard to tell exactly what is going on. Local conditions vary so not all advice transfer equally. But, I have a always had queens released by just removing the cork. I know some people use a small nail to poke a hole in the candy.

I am wondering if the hive temps are getting too high with smaller bee numbers? I am also wondering if you are getting brood/bee numbers out of balance? Or, are they getting robbed out before they can become established?

I would try nuc boxes with a very small entrance, one or two bees at a time. I like to have a frame of capped brood and a frame of open brood, but no eggs/larvae under three days old. I don't want the bees to think they can make their own queen. I would do this when there is at least a little nectar flow to reduce the robbing pressure.

I don't usually have to deal with the daytime temps you do so I am not sure how a small nuc would deal with them. You might want to look at how Randy Oliver makes splits. His environmental conditions are a lot closer to yours than mine.

Tom


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## crofter

Bee numbers too low to control hive temperature. They have to bring in water and fan it off for evaporative cooling. If the wax is collapsing it is too hot for brood. Your method of populating the frames and moving the splits a short distance may have lost all the flying bees. 

My son makes many splits just as you describe but much much cooler climate.


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## heaflaw

have you checked for queen cells?


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## tarheit

Candy can be a very imperfect timing mechanism for releasing a queen. They can sometimes get though it in a less than a day, and sometimes never quite get though it. My perfered method is to not remove the cork, but to check in 3 days and manually release if they aren't still trying to ball or chew on the cage. If she isn't accepted yet, I try again in a day or two. It's much more reliable as it doesn't depend on the timing of the candy, or the variables of queen acceptance. It also lets you react more quickly if the queen happens to die in the cage. 

After release, we then generally check the hive in a week to make sure she is laying and they arent still trying to build queen cells. Sometimes a caged queen may take a few days to begin laying, but in a week, she certainly should be.

If you do rely on the candy for release, it doesn't hurt to check back in 3-4 days just to make sure she is out. It's a quick check and doesn't require pulling frames. 

However, as others have said, you likely had a temperature issue which complicated things. Typically not something I see in my area either.


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## lifesosweet

Thanks for the replies! Yes, we will for sure be checking back next time and not let them go more than 3 days before checking. No there weren't any sign of queen cells. The bees that were in there didn't make it. It was a mess. We don't recall coming across ANY information about not doing splits when temps were too high but that makes a lot of sense and I do think that was probably it. There may have been a little robbing but we did have the entrance reduced pretty small. So many possible variables to account for. We will wait for spring and try again as I believe we can meet the above mentioned criteria if our hives make it through winter. Thanks for the insight.


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## odfrank

I agree:
Move splits two miles to retain population
Place in shade as to not overheat
prevent robbing
manual release queens after three days

I have two way queen castles on division screens to allow small entrances with good ventilation. For queen cells the foam mating nucs are well ventilated and insulated for hot climate queen rearing.


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