# Great day of splitting with queen pics



## Dan. NY (Apr 15, 2011)

I almost didn't open my hives today as the weather is overcast and threatening rain. But I have not done checks and figured they would be in swarm mode. How right I was. Girls were a little cranky and bounced off the veil a little but not bad. Good strong hive... I stopped counting swarm cells at like 8. At least one fully capped!!!! For the first time really ever I found her majesty. Almost evaded me but finally located her on the bottom box, running along the frame. Woo hoo. I took the bottom box with queen and moved to a new location. Put 2 boxes of bees on original location and one super. Split number one down. 

Hive number two quite calm. Very few bouncing off the veil. Only a few swarm cells but strong Hive. None capped but close. Found her majesty again on the bottom box. Same steps for this split. Second and final split done. 

Last hive is a runt of a hive and not good for split. I did locate the queen and she looked fine. This hive is building up but slowly. It will make it but I suspect the queen will be overthrown. They were a tiny hive out of winter and didn't have mass enough to build like the others, my guess.

Something weird I saw though . A drone had a blue spec on it, like a marked queen. Looked out of place. Queen images coming shortly.


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## Gazelle (May 17, 2015)

Someone was practicing queen marking on drones! Haha


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## NicoleV (Jan 20, 2017)

Gazelle said:


> Someone was practicing queen marking on drones! Haha


Haha! That proves that drones really do go into multiple hives. I'm assuming you didn't do it since it was a surprise.


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## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

If you were looking to replace the queen in the smaller hive you could have used a swarm cell or two from one of your other hives to replace her. Were you not concerned about replacing her?

Over all it sounds like a good day of splitting though.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Was going to post the same thing as Scott. Stick a queen cell in your poor performing hive, in the box above the queen, or kill the queen and split the small hive into several nucs and put queen cells in each one. I use small hives for making splits, as recommended by Michael Palmer.


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## Dan. NY (Apr 15, 2011)

Hmm some good ideas. I did briefly think about replacing queen in the small hive, but I thought it was small due to weather. It was a tiny cluster that came out of winter and this spring has seen some chilly days. I thought this hive was not large enough to build up quickly and didn't think the queen was bad. It is building up now and I saw quite a bit of uncapped larva.


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## Spur9 (Sep 13, 2016)

Kudos to u for an awesome day! Nice to see eggs, but seeing the big girls is better.


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