# How long does it take for a queen in a split to start laying again? And other paranoi



## houseofcakes (Aug 4, 2018)

So I have a hive that is on it's 3rd summer. Last year I think it swarmed, then I split it, then I recombined it in the early fall bc the split failed to yield a queen/eggs. It got through the winter which was mild and was going crazy in April. It was 5 med boxes (left 3 brood and 2 supers over the winter).

I checked it April 19 and didn't see any queen cells. Checked it May 3 and found a ton and some capped so split the hive. I took the original queen and brood into a new box plus a box from the original location and moved it to a new spot. Entrance reducer is at smallest.

May 4 I went thru and cleaned out all the queen cells from the original hive. Got a (purchased) new queen on the 6th and installed her today (5/7 bc it rained yesterday). 

Questions:
1. I know I am cutting it close with queens emerging and installing a purchased queen. I don't think this happened bc I checked the whole hive again for cells before installing her and found only one emergency cell (mid frame). Removed it before putting her in. If a queen did hatch...what happens?

2. How long should I wait to check to see if the queen has been released. I put a little bit of marshmallow on top of the candy plug to slow them down but I'm worried about my worst case scenario (e.g. virgin queen somehow hatched...went on a flight so is out of the hive, I installed a queen, mated queen comes back or some sort of crazy like that...seems like not enough days but maybe I missed something). The bees didn't seem aggressive toward the queen cage so I'm assuming they *are* queenless. I have a quick video here (photo attached): https://www.dropbox.com/s/bewni5plkof9yvw/Movie 2.mp4?dl=0

In hindsight I should have observed longer (and put the cage horizontally like I do when installing a package but I was reading all this stuff about putting the cage candy side down, candy side up that I just second guessed myself).

3. The old queen that got split out and moved into a smaller hive. How long does it take for her to start laying again? I can't find info on this. I checked the box (4 days) and no new eggs but I found her. Should I move another box over from the original hive? Too late? I didn't split them 50/50, should I do that in the future? There are a good # of bees in the split but I didn't see any new eggs...just the brood I put in there. When should I check/be concerned? I don't want to go poking around too much bc I read (too much) that disturbing it could cause them to swarm anyway. This queen was going very strong (hence the split). Or maybe this is a virgin queen? (Pic attached)

I'm totally overthinking this and feeling doomed so any advice is appreciated. My split/swarm mgmt is clumsy at best.

Thx.


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## houseofcakes (Aug 4, 2018)

Edit: May 4 not April 4


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