i split a hive on the 16th of july. today i checked of the split and the one queen right and the other is booming but has a swarm cell!
is that normal?
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Bees' life does not follow "normal" course.
British beekeepers like to speak about consensus.
Bees love to arrange surprises to new beekepers.
It took 7 years to me that they did not arranged big surprices to me.
If you've got swarm cells, maybe it's time for another split? They make nice queens.
Make sure your current queen is not failing. Or has already fallen?
That queen cell could be a supersedure cell.
Sounds about right. I would do a close inspection of the queenless hive, most likely there are not just one but multiple queen cells by now. If not I would add a frame of fresh eggs. One queen cell is too few to bet on in my opinion. If there are many queen cells you have the option of splitting them into another hive, if you have plenty bees.
Once having done that leave them alone. The timeline is 21 days from egg being layed to emerging queen. It will be a month- mid August before there is a fertilized queen laying eggs.
Splitting now is a great way to drop the mite population. However, these hives need to be strong with many bees to build up enough before winter.
21 days is worker brood...Drones are 24 and queens are 16.
Scott