Split yesterday. Acceptance question

[malabarchillin]

Yesterday at 10 am I did a 50/50 split from a 10 frame deep. I was lucky enough to find the queen immediately. I moved the split with the new queen about 100 feet away. 6 hours later I put a bought queen still in her cage between the brood frames. I removed her attendants. At 12 today I checked on her acceptance. There were quite a few bees on her cage with their heads all facing her. I took this as acceptance since their butts were not facing her trying to sting her. I decided to open her cage and let her climb down into the hive. Things happen quickly, but it looked like the bees wanted to touch her and crowded around her. I have never seen bees 'ball a queen' so I can not compare. MY question is if they were all facing her in her cage was that not a sign of acceptance, like they were feeding her ? After that display is it likely that they balled her.

Another question. The other hive that the split went into along with the old queen still does not have
much external activity. I open the hive at 12 today and there were a lot of bees on three frames and they seemed content. Is it normal to see no external activity the day after a split ?

I was feeding the original hive before the split and I continue to feed both 1:1 syrup.

Thanks for your replies.
Mike

I would rather you leave this post in this forum to get opinions. If it goes into requeening I believe that there will be much fewer readers/comments.

[Jerrymac]

You moved the hive 100 feet away and you placed the other hive in the old location, is that correct? If so all the foragers went to the new hive and the house bees with the old queen are not ready to venture out yet.

Can't help with the new queen thing but I do have a question. Why did you remove the attending bees?

[malabarchillin]

About half of the things I have read say remove the attendants and half say leave them.
I put water and syrup on her cage with the attendants for a couple of hours before I removed them.
My thinking was that the queen alone may be more likely to be accepted than 5 more strange bees in the
queenless hive. My first split.

[Michael Bush]

>Things happen quickly, but it looked like the bees wanted to touch her and crowded around her. I have never seen bees 'ball a queen' so I can not compare. MY question is if they were all facing her in her cage was that not a sign of acceptance, like they were feeding her ? After that display is it likely that they balled her.

Just because the bees on the cage are accepting her doesn't mean the rest of them will accept her.  I'd have waited four days or let them eat out the candy.  Go back in about four days and look for eggs and queen cells.  Queen cells would indicate they rejected her.  Eggs would indicate they accepted her.

>Another question. The other hive that the split went into along with the old queen still does not have
much external activity. I open the hive at 12 today and there were a lot of bees on three frames and they seemed content. Is it normal to see no external activity the day after a split ?

If this is the one at the new location it would be normal as all the field bees will go back to the old location.  It will take some time for them to recruit field bees.

[Cindi]

Mike, I think that things may have become a little bit confused here.  You may have read about beekeepers sometimes releasing the queen immediately, but I am thinking that this action of releasing the queen after hiving the package may be pertaining to package bees that have been with the queen for a few days. Then the queen can be released immediately.

I think that when one has purchased a queen and is giving a colony a new queen that the queen should be allowed a slow release.  This will give several days for her scents to mingle in the hive and queen acceptance.

This can be confusing, and you may have read or heard somewhere to release queen shortly after putting in the colony in her cage.  I don't think that I would release the queen immediately like that.

This is your first split.  You are learning and that is wonderful.  I don't know if you made a mistake by removing the attendants or not, again, I probably would have just left the attendants in the cage, they would help to feed her by receiving food from other bees in the colony.

If the queen is not accepted, that is something learned, do not lament over it.  I need to say this again, you are learning, you are trying, that is a wonderful thing, I take my hat off to you dude, yeah!!!  Good for you.  I have learned some very hard lessons through many, many errors that I have made.  I am not saying you HAVE errorred, chance you did, chance you did not, but carry on, yeah!!  Best of this beautiful day, enjoy this life we live. Cindi

[malabarchillin]

Thanks for the insightful replies so far !
I am aware of the differences of a package + queen and a solo queen.
I assumed a dozen bees on her cage feeding her was a sign that the whole hive was
accepting her. I hope that she is ok or that they will be quick enough to use uncapped brood
and raise a new queen. I do not have drones yet (not sure why), but by the time a queen would hatch
I am sure there will be some.
If they do not raise a queen with the uncapped brood they currently have can I (in 4ish days) remove
uncapped brood from my split (old queen) and give it to them ? Would I also give them nurse bees on the brood or just a frame of brood ?

[Michael Bush]

>I do not have drones yet (not sure why), but by the time a queen would hatch
I am sure there will be some.

You might not have drones, but in Florida, this time of year, I'm sure there are drones out there.  But on the subject of drones, you can't count on the timing of drones to have some by the time the queen emerges, because of the math:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

If you look at the chart in the above link you'll see that drones are flying to the DCA and mating until they 38 days or more after they eggs are layed.

If you do the math it works out like this.  The queen they start will be a four day old (from the egg) larvae and will emerge in 12 days from when they became queenless.  This queen will harden for a week or so and then mate, which could be as early as 19 days from when you made them queenless.  If the drones were the same age as the queen at that time they would not be flying to the DCAs until 19 days after the queen flies out to mate.

I always make sure I see drones flying before expecting them to be able to mate a queen.

[Brian D. Bray]

I would expect most of the southern states to have some amount of drone population nearly all year long.  The South being South of the Carolinas and east of Texas.  If your hives don't have drone there may be other hives close by that do.  Still having drones in your own hives is more of a guarantee that your queen will be mated because if your hive has drones, other hives are more apt to have drones too. 

Doing the math results in any queen cells prior to capped drone cells means an infertile queen is highly likely.  If you see a queen cell started after drone cells have been capped you should be fine.

[Scott Derrick]

I live in Blythewood, SC and all the hives that I have lose their drones. They start to go away around September. I just started seeing them about two weeks ago. I have about 16 hives and have had as many as 50.

[malabarchillin]

A update for noobs like myself and people who will search the archives in the future.

I made the 50/50 split last Friday and in bad judgement released a bought queen 24 hours later because I thought that a dozen bees on the queen cage accepting her meant the whole hive accepted her. I was wrong.
Today (5 days after the queen sacrifice) I looked inside and there are 5 capped queen cells and still a lot of bees. They are foraging and behaving like normal. So according to Michael Bush's Bee math She/They should emerge in 9 days and begin
laying in 20. The other queenright hive has a lot of brood in all stages, but only 2 frames of bees. They are still not eating the syrup or foraging so I gave them a frame of bees with honey and pollen from the other half of the split.

[limyw]

I used to place the postal cage into the box and let the bees chew away candy so queen get out from cage by herself a few days after. However, my record showed that this mathod caused about 15% of lost queen. So now I use push-in cage to cage new queen upon introduction and let her laying eggs within the push in cage, usually 3 days after I release her. Proudly to tell you that the success rate is 94%. 8-)

[Michael Bush]

I don't think you can beat a push in cage over some emerging brood.