I have a colony that is absolutely going like gangbusters. They have already filled 2 supers (but not capped) and I put a 3rd on yesterday. It is packed with bees. I noticed one queen cell on each of two frames. Assuming that the bees wanted to swarm and they needed more brood space, I took both frames with queen cells (capped brood, larvae, and bees) and another frame of brood/bees and a pollen frame, then put them in a new hive. The new hive has a medium super with 3 frames of honey and the remainder in comb.
Is there any problem with letting the queens hatch, duke it out, mate and start a new colony? Later, I would then like to join this colony with another weaker one so that it gets a new young queen. I think I've read about this type of splitting but not sure I'm doing it by the letter of the law.
Any thoughts?
It may work but it is chancy, they may not beable to produce enough heat to keep the brood alive. The best thing to do would be trying to get a new queen ordered, bye :D
I just did the same, but I am going to order queens - superseded queens can be duds or never come back to the hive, so i have ordered new queens so that they can get back up to spped quickly. Once I see how well it is going, I will combine them with another colony and make a colony for my observation hive.