# first split. Am I doing this right???



## Beekkirk (Mar 7, 2014)

jmgriss said:


> Today I opened it up for the first time. See picture attached


do you mean to say you left the hive shut for 10 days? you may not want to hear this but thats the last thing you're suppose to do.


----------



## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

I've never heard of it being done like that, but if it works...

The best queens are produced in densely populated hives with lots of well fed nurse bees - so it is likely that your queen may not be top notch.

If you are keeping a split in the same yard it is probably best if it's at least a few feet away from the parent hive. And yes all of the oriented foragers will return to the old location, but the nurse bees will all stay. So the trick is to make it up with enough nurse bees to keep it going until the brood hatches and a new queen starts laying about a month after you make the split. You do that by shaking bees off of brood frames, and making it stroger than you think it needs to be. Or you can move the nuc at least a mile or so away to keep them from going home. 

It's kind of irrelevant in this case but your queen cells are "emergency" cells. Supercedure cells are produced in a hive with an old or failing queen.

But you know what? It's good that you're giving it a go - all beekeepers should make increase. I think it is a major factor in new beekeeper success.

Good luck.


----------



## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Not sure where you heard to close up the hive for 10 days. But as Beekkirk mentioned, that's not a good practice.

Looks like you have a couple of nice queen cells on the bottom of the frame so hopefully you will have a laying queen in a couple of weeks. It may appear to have more bees due to newly emerging bees from the capped cells. Leave it alone for a couple weeks and then check for a laying queen. Leave the entrance open.


----------



## jmgriss (Jul 2, 2013)

thanks for the info everyone. glad I asked.


----------



## SouthTexasJohn (Mar 16, 2015)

Good stuff here.


----------

