How "clean" should a transfered brood-frame be?

[Zinc]

I did a split a few weeks ago with a few frames of brood that had queen cells on the bottom.

Checking the hive a couple weeks ago the "queen cells" had hatched - but there was no sign of queen or eggs in the new hive. I quickly ordered queens, but it's taken a couple of weeks to arrive.

Since there's no brood left in the spilt to swell the population of nurse bees, I was going to move a frame of brood form one of my other healthy hives into the split. (As often recommended)

My simple question (with the long winded lead-in) is:

When moving a frame of brood from one hive to another, aside from making sure the queen isn't on the frame - how clean of live bees should it be? Do I have to brush them all off - or can there be some left?

Does the fact that the destination hive is queenless have anything to do with the answer?

Thanks!

-Craig

[Hethen57]

Well...I did this same thing on Sunday and smoked them (both the frame and the nuc) a bit and it was fine adding a frame of brood and eggs full of bees....no dead ones on the landing board the next day. I did this because I wasn't sure that the queen in the nuc survived and I saw a bunch of fresh eggs on the frame I added (no queen because I caged her for marking) so that they could make another queen if they had to.  The nurse bees on the brood aren't likely to fight much, and if the hive is queenless, those other bees don't have a queen smell to fight over.  I would used either smoke or I have heard of some spraying with light sugar water and you should be fine.

[Michael Bush]

It almost always takes a queen two weeks from when she emerges to when she is laying.  Sometimes even three.

I usually leave all the bees on the brood frame.

[riverrat]

bet there is a queen in there i would give it a frame of eggs to see if they make a queen cell before buying a queen

[Michael Bush]

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

If you do a split and the bees raise the new queen how much brood will be left in the hive just before the new queen starts to lay? None. It will take 24 or 25 days for the new queen (raised from a four day old) to be laying and in 21 days all the workers will have emerged and in 24 days all the drones will have emerged.   And it could take a week longer than that if the weather is bad.