# General Hive Question and a Question About Splits



## JClaunch (Apr 7, 2014)

Hey all,

I decided to split my only hive today. It has been raining the past week or so and I noticed way too much traffic for my liking. I opened it and basically did and even split of all the frames. As I was going through the frames I noticed a lot of capped drone (3-4 frames out of 20) but also open and capped worker brood. I also saw several queen cups. I have never been able to see the eggs even when I look close. Is that amount of drone normal for a hive at this point in the year? I am assuming they are boosting numbers.

The second question is since I could not see eggs and only THINK I saw the queen should I wait the normal four weeks to check the second hive for a queen and eggs?


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## gezellig (Jun 11, 2014)

I wouldn't wait that long. If you can't see eggs, you can depend on the queen cells that will be drawn down as an indication of the one that is queenless. So be sure to look again in s week. Queen cells are capped on day 8. Then you will know which one has a queen. Normally I would recommend you provide a frame of eggs per week to the queenless colony, until you start seeing eggs from their new queen. That does two things. Keeps their numbers up, and also provides them with the resources to make a queen should the virgin queen fall to mishap on mating flight, fighting, etc...


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