> Well, at risking overdoing a good thing, here's some more on walk-away
> splits:
>
> > I'm more interested in how your split 'em and walk away
> queens turn out.
>
> We've done walk-away splits it before with good results.  The
> major problem is the 21-day queenless period, so they have
> to happen early to make it for the flow.

Well, here's a bit more on the subject of splitting and the various
methods of providing a new queen to the queenless half.  Right now, that
21-day queenless period mentioned above is starting to look pretty
tolerable compared to reality in some cases we have seen lately.

Maybe I would be better to sit back and keep the results to myself,
since they are not what we all like to think we are capable of, but
sometimes, s*it happens and it rains and rains and, to top that, it is
cold and windy.  It's been a lousy spring for queen introductions of any
kind here in my part of Central Alberta, and we've had less than great
luck with either mated queens or cells. I can only be thankfull that we
haven't had more than a few days pass in a row without sunny breaks to
provide good mating opportunities and a chance for the bees to get out
and forage a bit.

Believe it or not, our best luck seems to be the walk-away spits we
made.  I'll have to admit right here that they were not 100% simon-pure
walk-aways; in most cases we introduced ripe cells in protectors later
as insurance.  At any rate, it seems either the cells were not up to
snuff, or the bees preferred their own emergency cells, judging by how
long it has taken to get mated queens showing up in the hives.  Of
course we don't know for certain which queen made the grade, but when it
takes almost a month to get definite signs of a resident queen, the
assumption has to be that it was an emergency cell that succeeded, not
the introduced cell(s).

It is interesting to note how differently hives respond to
queenlessness.  Some of the splits built many handsome looking cells,
some only one, and some others, none that we could spot.  Nonetheless,
some of the latter came up with a good queen.  Don't ask me how.
Anyhow, I've spent weeks wondering about this process and bought a ton
of books, most of which I have read and marked up.  This will be the
subject of another post.

Our grafted cells were generally pretty good, but, with the weather
we've had, I know some were a little short on provisions.  I always like
to hatch some of the queens from each batch in the incubator and see how
they look after emergence and how long it takes before they start to
lose energy before offering them honey.  It gives some idea of how well
they were fed before sealing.  If they just hatch, walk around for a few
minutes and fall over, I reckon they were not well enough fed,
regardless of how big they are.  FWIW, with the JZ BZ cups, we can
easily see the extra food at the top of the cell, and I did see some
that did not have that reddish brown crust in there.

Our luck with mated queens was not any better.  We lost most of the
first 100 we bought before they were even installed due to as problem
with the queen candy, which was runny and had strange effects on the
queens.  It almost seemed the candy was toxic, and the accompanying bees
died off after a few days, and the rescued queens went shortly after.
Providing them with fresh bees did not save them.

The second batch of mated queens was okay, even though the candy was
excessively soft (so soft that we could not make a distinct hole through
it).  27 out of 80 in that group failed to be accepted.  Some laid and
disappeared, some simply were not there several weeks after
introduction.  As often happens, I got to see one dizzy queen running
around inside her mailing cage 10+ days after introduction with nothing
whatsoever blocking the tunnel.  She could have walked out anytime.

So, although we have not finished all our checks, we have noticed
approximately 30% failure in the first attempt for all the methods,
measured at a little less than one month after splitting.

As far as salvaging the operation, the walk-away hives are the easiest
to deal with, since we have simply inserted a frame with eggs and young
larvae at each check and know that eventually we will have success.
When we have extra grafted cells, we tuck one of them in too for good
measure.

As for the ones with the mated queens introduced, some of them
eventually came up with a queen from the eggs some of them laid before
leaving the planet.  The rest got a cell or a frame of eggs and young
larvae or both.  I'm sure glad that I'm not making the third attempt on
such hives to get them to take another $10 (US) queen after they somehow
'lost' the first one or two.

One thing about this lousy weather is that the bees are not wearing
themselves out flying around.  They seem to be getting a bit of a flow
now and then and the rest of the time they are saving themselves.  Even
the queenless halves required a second box some time back as the brood
from before the splitting continued to hatch, and we will be putting on
thirds in a week or two.  So all in all, the hives seem good and strong.

It would just be nice if they all had laying queens.

allen