Make up your mind!

[Hill's Hivery]

I watched a swarm leave on of my hives 2 days ago.  It was pretty cool to watch, and sad!
10 minutes later they returned to the hive like nothing ever happened.  The next day I knew that I needed to take action.  I made a cut down split only I couldn't find the queen.  Instead of leaving a frame of eggs in the old hive I left the queen cells that I hadn't damaged.  So far no swarms and they are back to work as usual.  I also placed one queen cell into the new split just in case there wasn't a queen in there also.  I did find eggs during the inspection so I know she was in there somewhere, but finding her in 3 full supers was a challenge.

What do you all think?  Good Plan or Bad Plan?  I am planning on rechecking in a week to see how they have progressed.

[Brian D. Bray]

I would have put the existing queen in the split and left the queen cells in the original hive.  That is closer to the effect of an actual swarm.  Splitting as you have, leaving the queen in the parent hive may very well produce more swarms later.

[greg spike]

Just went through the same thing, man. Much sympathy, its pretty stressfull for a beginner.
  I underestimated how fast my girls could fill a super during a good flow last week; in six days between checks they drew seven frames of comb, filled em', then filled the brood cells with honey and decided to hit the road. All day Saturday they kept false swarming, I guess the queen didn't want to go. After stressing out all day waiting for them to settle; I scoured the hive trying to find the queen.She must have been in there but three times I took those supers apart looking for her, still couldn't find her.

After I got fed up with that, I put a couple brood and honey frames with swarm cells in a new box with a good amount of bees(made doubly sure the queen wasn't among them) That night when they settled down i closed off the entrance to the first hive and kept it closed for a full day. I hoped they would either settle down or begin supercedure if they didn't have a queen. When I let them out Monday morning, they poured out, did orienting flights, and started foraging like nothing was wrong.

The old and new hives are both still going strong, So i think its gonna turn out all right. I'll dig through them this weekend and see what
became of my old queen. I think shes in there but frustration and inexperience made me miss her.

live and learn. good luck man