Checked my hive today and one of the frames had 2 queen cells right in the middle. I don't know what to do because I have never had it happen to me before.:scratch:(NEW BEE) I have one hive (carniolan) with poor queen, I took the queen out from carniolians and last saturday I combined it with 3lb Italians bees. They didnt' want to release queen from the cage. Queen was still in the case today so I, myself released her from the cage. They did 2 queen cells from the old carniolan queen eggs. I don't think this hive is big enough to make a split. I really want to keep carniolan queen cells, but don't know what to do.:s Any good and simple advise would help!!!
If you had as many bees as in the package or close I would split it. If nothing else you could combine them again later or help one with the other if they are struggling along. For all you know the queen you bought is crap.
I'd leave alone for now. You can not be sure the released queen did not kill the cells, or even if the cells are good. Let them build then split later.
The cells are also from a queen that was not good. This could mean many things, but depending on what "not good" actually means, you may not want a daughter from her anyways. Would you buy a queen from a breeder who uses eggs from a queen that is failing or from a poor queen? I know I would not. I want queens from eggs from a prolific producer, at the peak of her prime, and eggs that I know are the best I can get.
Let them build up, and then change over or split later. they will build faster as one unit compared to two smaller units now.
from what JP has posted, you can't even be sure that there are queens in those cells.
By "poor queen" I mean I took them from a tree branch and not sure how old queen was. I am sure queen is at least a couple of year old because when I removed them from the branch their combs were really dark in color and just a couple of new drawn combs. I didn't see any swarm cells on the combs. She was still laying but she's not laying much as a young queen would.
And I know for sure that there are queens in both cups because yesterday when I looked at them, they had tiny little holes. Bees are not caped yet and I can see white little creatures in there.
A frame of brood and a frame of nectar with enough nurse bees to cover the frames will make a mating nuc... Not sure if you have enough resources to spare that from your joined hive with caged queen, in order to make up the mating nuc for the queen cells, if you want to try and raise them.
Mixing different genetic strains of bees as a join when introducing queens can be more tricky. Sometimes bees of different strains don't want to accept queens from other strains, especially if they have eggs or young enough larva to make queen from their own line. This might be part of what is happening to you here. This is normally only a problem when introducing a queen is involved, it usually works fine if you are just adding a frame of brood with nurse bees to a hive as a boost. I know your Italian queen came with a package, but it is a package and has no brood, so would be a strange intrusion into the Carni hive which had brood and larva.