# After the split questions



## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

I split like this all the time and what I have found is that I have to control the number of cells in the queenless box in the beginning or I wind up just like you may have--the first queen out swarms leaving the hive with a bunch of emerging queens. They in turn will swarm until there is nothing left of the original hive. On about the 8-9th day after the original split, I go through the hive and remove all the extra cells leaving behind 2 cells on one frame. That seems to avoid the issue you seem to be having now.

Right now I think if this were my hive I'd go through it and remove all but 2 cells to keep it from repeating itself with a bunch of swarms that leave the original hive pretty much decimated. I doubt there is a laying queen still in there, but if there is they have said they don't like her by raising more cells, so let them replace her with one of those 2 cells you leave behind.


JMO


Rusty


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## zombeek (Dec 30, 2015)

excellent thanks. I did as you recommended for the parent hive and I believe I left 2 queen cells (possibly 3). I also moved one frame with some queen cells on it to a seperate nuc and added a frame of brood, pollen, and honey and quite a few nurse bees. I did the same thing to another hive on May 10th. I looked today and there are capped queen cells (2-3) and a few that are uncapped (maybe 3 or 4). I assume I need to wait another week and once I see a laying queen I can either cut out the queen cells or move them to yet another nuc? This is new to me and quite addictive. I now understand why people have so many colonies.


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