# Walk away split with my old queen & they swarmed



## UtterParadise (11 mo ago)

So I did a vertical split and put the queen on top. 

The bottom box successfully made a queen and they are thriving with her.

I split the top box with the old queen and walked away to a new location.

theyve been doing great for a month in their new spot.

well they just swarmed. 

There are maybe 100 bees left. 3 frames of honey. One frame of bee bread. 2 frames of eggs and larvae.

what the hell do I do?

did I do something wrong?

is that enough bees left to build a new queen? Or should I shake some nurse bees in from one of my other hives?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

UtterParadise said:


> There are maybe *100 bees left.*


Write it off as a loss and move on.
Combine the remnants to some other colony.


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## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

Did you find a virgin or capped cells in the hive? This would be the first thing to determine if they are viable.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

Bummer....but It happens more frequently than most of us care to admit.

Depending on 'your location' (?) you will probably have time to make another split from the original colony. 

Bees have their ways to remind us that they are not cattle, but 'wild' creatures. They are lovely social insects that do what they want to do when they want to do it. 

Our job is to watch and observe....so we can predict their behavior and take action as needed......but keep in mind that even the most observant among us will still miss important signals the bees are sending to us.


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