# Question on Splitting/Finding the Queen



## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

So I am just thinking about if I end up needing to make a split this year. Most recent inspection showed the beginnings of some queen cells (open on the ends, dont know if they had anything in them), but I have to travel this week for work, so wont get back into the hive until this weekend.

Finding the queen isnt my strong suit, so how do you go about making a split if you cant find the queen? Do you just keep going frame by frame until you find her? 

The hive in question was very strong, but wasnt building much on the plastic foundation that was in the nuc they came from. I gave them old comb, and they cleaned it up and had it mostly filled with nectar. Hoping they havent swarmed on me while Im away, but wanted to have a game plan in case they have made queen cells.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Make your split and shake off all the bees. Place it in and empty body above an excluder over night. Take it off in the morning, locate it in the apiary, and give it a queen. No need to look for the queen.


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## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

Thank you Mr. Palmer.

Thats an amazingly simple idea. I was hoping to leave the split with the queen cell so they could raise their own queen rather than putting a new one in.


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## Yukon-Gold (Nov 13, 2013)

I've seen this recommendation several times and am considering trying it. My reservation has always been damaging the queen by shaking her down. Obviously my hesitation has been unwarranted as Mr Palmer surely knows much more than I. 

I've spent more time than I care to admit trying to find the queen doing splits and this way seems so simple.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

It is a great idea if you are in hurry and have to make a split immediately and need to be certain which one has the queen.

If you are able to wait for a week, split evenly all the brood and stores and insert a queen excluder between the boxes. Come back a week later, pull the top box and move it to a new location. Inspect both splits, the one with eggs has the queen, the other needs to be requeened.


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## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

Mike Gillmore said:


> It is a great idea if you are in hurry and have to make a split immediately and need to be certain which one has the queen.
> 
> If you are able to wait for a week, split evenly all the brood and stores and insert a queen excluder between the boxes. Come back a week later, pull the top box and move it to a new location. Inspect both splits, the one with eggs has the queen, the other needs to be requeened.



I would be worried that I would put the queen in the same box as any queen cells, and if I missed them hatching out, would end up with a queen-less box. I know the other could make a new queen if they have eggs, but if I got it wrong, would lose a few weeks in the meantime.


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## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

It is a good idea.
However, if you take yourself serious as a beekeeper, learning to find the queen is a basic rite of passage.
You can do it.
Get some mentoring help if necessary.
Soon, you will be helping others quickly find their queens.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

ScipioUSA said:


> I would be worried that I would put the queen in the same box as any queen cells, and if I missed them hatching out, would end up with a queen-less box.


I understand. If your colony is that far along and has swarms cells started with larvae in them then you need to act immediately and do your splits. Don't worry about where the queen is, just split it up 2 or 3 ways, and make sure there are cells in each split. That's what I would do. Otherwise half the bees will end up in the trees.


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## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

HarryVanderpool said:


> It is a good idea.
> However, if you take yourself serious as a beekeeper, learning to find the queen is a basic rite of passage.
> You can do it.
> Get some mentoring help if necessary.
> Soon, you will be helping others quickly find their queens.


Agreed Harry, finding her is something that is a pretty basic skill. Just one that I havent had much of a chance to master. Figured that with one hive I didnt want to risk crashing it by rolling her pulling the brood nest apart. 

Ill get there, but as Mike pointed out, I just want to keep all my bees first, not just half of them....


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## tanksbees (Jun 16, 2014)

I can usually find a queen by looking at the bees behavior.

Find the frame that has lots of mellow bees on it. Usually the center 3 or 4 frames in the uppermost box you let her lay in. Lift it up straight, then quickly tip the frame on end, end bar pointed to the sky. The queen will usually rotate and her big butt will move the other bees out of her way and she will be easy to spot. When the bees are moving it is much easier to spot a queen. If you don't see her in a few seconds she is probably not there.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

HarryVanderpool said:


> It is a good idea.
> However, if you take yourself serious as a beekeeper, learning to find the queen is a basic rite of passage.
> You can do it.
> Get some mentoring help if necessary.
> Soon, you will be helping others quickly find their queens.


I've gotten much better at it, and I can be very persistent when I need to - but I've also learned a lot of strategies to avoid having to find queens. Like the ones in this thread.

You can't avoid it though if you are rearing queens, and usually it's not hard to find a queen in a mating nuc - even relatively big ones like I use. But yesterday I went through a populous 4 frame nuc 3 times without spotting the queen even though it was obviously queenright. Turned out she was crawling around in the box - not on the combs. If that had been a *big* strong hive she would have been pretty hard to find I think. If she wasn't nice and fat and yellow I probably would not have spotted her anyway.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Finding the queen isnt my strong suit, so how do you go about making a split if you cant find the queen?

I don't bother to find the queen when doing splits. I just split them.

The best way to learn to find a queen is to get an observation hive and don't mark the queen. You can practice finding her several times a day. Soon you'll spot her instantly at a glance.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Scipio, just split them. make sure you have brood in both boxes, and queen cells in both boxes. 
if you have an extra box to put on top of each of these splits that would be great. now, remember, you need to mouve your split at least 2 miles away or place in dark, cool place (basement) for 2 days, then replace outside. if you don't you will loose a lot of the bees going back to mother hive. 
about finding the queen, there is much i could tell you, but this is something you have to do. 
here's a few pointers. if you have 10 frames in your box, pull the side frame out, no mater what side ( i would go with the side with less bees, so i do not kill them as i pull the frame out, since it can be snug in there). glance at it, to make sure no queen on it. then , skip 3 frames and start looking at the 5th frame. if no queen, place to the side, and then go to frame 6. no queen, then go back to frame 3. then 4 then go 7 and 8 and 9 and 10. as you have 2-3 frames out of the hive, you can replace the frame you inspected on the side you opened since there is room there. it is not good to have all your frames out of the hive, you risk loosing your queen.
when you look at one frame for the queen, start from the middle , in a snail pattern, towards the outside of the frame, so just look in a spiral from the center to the edges. then flip over, make sure she is not on the bottom bar, and do the same on the other side of the frame. make sure you are in the sun , and not shade. you can see better in the light 

other than that, i find training your eye to spot the differences helps. you know those 2 pictures in the newspaper, spot the 15 difference between the 2 images  that is what you have to do. at a glance over the frame, you have to spot the difference in body size, shape all that stuff. and always think this , in the morning to mid day, she will be on the egg/brood frames, and in the afternoon, it is more likely to find her feeding on the honey frames next to the brood. but then, each queen is special, and has her own schedules. 
good luck, and oh yeah, split them in half before you leave. when you come back go look. the hive with eggs is where your queen is 



ScipioUSA said:


> So I am just thinking about if I end up needing to make a split this year. Most recent inspection showed the beginnings of some queen cells (open on the ends, dont know if they had anything in them), but I have to travel this week for work, so wont get back into the hive until this weekend.
> 
> Finding the queen isnt my strong suit, so how do you go about making a split if you cant find the queen? Do you just keep going frame by frame until you find her?
> 
> The hive in question was very strong, but wasnt building much on the plastic foundation that was in the nuc they came from. I gave them old comb, and they cleaned it up and had it mostly filled with nectar. Hoping they havent swarmed on me while Im away, but wanted to have a game plan in case they have made queen cells.


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## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

Just an update here, and a little bit of beekeepers remorse already.

Did a hive inspection today, since it was the first nice day to do so since I have been back at the hive. Medium that I had placed last weekend was probably 5-6 frames drawn out, all nectar. No brood. Ut oh. Went into the deep on the bottom, and there are TONS of bees, and mostly all nectar and honey. Four frames on one side was all nectar/pollen, no brood. Then a plastic frame built on one side only with five queen cells. Then some other frames with just a tiny bit of capped honey in the corners, some capped brood, and some drone cells at the very bottom. All the rest was nectar. So very nectar bound.

I pulled out four frames from the hive, one of which was all plastic and had nothing built on it. Gave the bees some foundation and a drawn comb, and put the other frames in a nuc box with some drawn comb for them to clean up. Nuc has the capped queen cells in it. I tried to find the queen, even went back through the nuc, but didnt have any luck finding her at all. So not sure which box she is in, and hopefully I didnt screw things up too much. I really didnt want to just leave the capped queen cells, but was worried about so little brood, and no sign of open brood/eggs. So my guess is that with the locust bloom on here, they are getting ready to fly. Hopefully opening the brood nest stalls them for a bit, but I really more hope that I didnt screw things up. 

Normally would just want to leave them alone, but thought I would have to do something or just watch them swarm....


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## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

As an additional thought, I have to leave town for work for a few weeks, so I cant regularly check on the hive or the split I made. There wasnt a lot of capped brood in either one. I can either combine both again into a deep on top of the original honey-bound deep, or just leave things alone for a while.

If the hive is queenless, how long do I have before its a big issue?


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## Terry C (Sep 6, 2013)

Why don't you just make sure both hives have some queen cells ? If there's a queen in one , she'll kill the cells .


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## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

Hadnt considered that idea. I guess my fear being that if I left a cell in the main hive, they might up and take off. 

One of the books I read stated that they wont swarm with more bees out of the hive than there are capped brood to replace them, but not sure how that works if the brood nest is full of nectar.


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## ScipioUSA (Jun 9, 2013)

Just wanted to post an update for those that were offering advice and anyone who finds this thread in the future....

So the split didnt work out nearly as well as I had hoped. All the queen cells had hatched, but no eggs could be found, and the number of bees was dwindling. There was no brood, no nothing. Just some capped honey on a burr comb covered plastic frame. So, I did what seemed to make sense, and went ahead and put the split back into a deep hive body, and stuck it on top of the main hive again (which also had no signs of a queen, no eggs, and no capped brood). There was space in the brood nest, and they were working on putting nectar up in a super. 

Checked this past weekend, and only needed to get three frames into the deep and saw a bunch of eggs in drawn comb. Immediately put things back together and left them alone. 

Will check again this weekend to see if there are brood developing as they should, and if thats the case Ill just leave the brood nest alone after that, and will only check the supers to see when I need another one. Guessing this is a great brood break to help with mite control at least, and Im just happy that the hive seems to be doing well.

Just shows that the default of doing nothing is probably the best one to take when in doubt, until you know what is going on. Perhaps I didnt have swarm cells but supercedure cells.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>So the split didnt work out nearly as well as I had hoped. All the queen cells had hatched, but no eggs could be found, and the number of bees was dwindling. There was no brood, no nothing. Just some capped honey on a burr comb covered plastic frame. So, I did what seemed to make sense, and went ahead and put the split back into a deep hive body, and stuck it on top of the main hive again (which also had no signs of a queen, no eggs, and no capped brood).

After how long?
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

If you do a walk away split, they will start with a four day old larva. In 12 days they will have a virgin queen. In another week or so she will be hardened and start making orientation flights. In another week she will likely be mated. Sometimes, if the weather is bad it could be one more week. So it is likely to be between 26 and 33 days until you have a laying queen. People often get impatient and don't realize how long it takes. In other words if you did a split on May 19th (the day you first started talking about it, and I'm guessing several days BEFORE you did the split) the queen wouldn't emerge until May the 31st and you probably wouldn't see eggs until June 14 and it could take as long as June 21st. It's not June the 21st yet... that's still 3 days away. And I'm guessing you didn't do the split until after the 19th...


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## tanksbees (Jun 16, 2014)

He said he did the split on the 25th, with capped queen cells.

I think it was too early to call this one. Capped cell only accelerates the process 4 days.

They might also have swarmed when multiple cells hatched.


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