Al is a second year beekeeper. He was thrilled his single hive came through the winter in a strong fashion. (Al treated his hive with MAQS and requeened with an Ankle Biter queen last fall) Even back in March he was concerned that the hive was going to swarm at any moment. After a little coaching Al held out doing the split until last Tuesday, May 2nd, although the anticipation was killing him. To help lessen the hive conjestion Al had added another deep giving the queen more room to lay. When he did the split he did not see any swarm cells.
So now a little more than a week has passed and Al has inspected both the original (#1) and new (#2) hives. He found that the bees had done their job and started 7 queen cells on several frames in the new hive. Some are capped and some still developing.
He now gets to wait for about 8 more days for the queens to emerge from the capped cells and then another 2 weeks will pass prior to the surviving new queen starts laying. Way to go Al!!
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