Hello all,

I have a colony of Carniolans that was ready to swarm, capped queen cells.
It appeared that the queen had all but stopped laying. I couldn't find any
eggs or young larvae 2 weeks ago. I cut out cells for the second time. I
ordered a new Carniolan queen. When I returned to split the hive I looked
twice for the queen without success. She had been fairly easy to spot
before. There also wasn't any open brood only capped. I didn't find any new
swarm cells built on the bottom bars but I did find capped supercedure cells
in the hive.  I split anyway assuming the hive was queenless. I introduced
the queen in her cage to the split section and left 1 frame with cells on it
in the parent hive.

I went back a few days later and the queen was out of her cage. I checked
both halves of the split yesterday and found the parent hive with cells to
have hatched. I followed a strange sound coming from a frame and it was
coming from the queen. Can anyone advise what she was doing? I've read of
tooting but didn't think it should happen in this situation. It sounded like
a "meep-meep-meep-meep-meep" I checked her out she was wandering over the
comb but not laying eggs. Wondering if she isn't mated yet or just returned?

The other half of the split, I couldn't find my marked queen, and they have
started to build cells on the bottom bars. However they have no eggs or
larvae to rear queen and they're too weak anyway. Why would they have
rejected this new queen. Also the parent colony is very strong in worker
numbers while the split is rather weak. I would estimate bees only covering
6 frames or so.

Can anyone give me suggestions on how to handle this? I apologize for the
length. I wanted to provide enough detail so you could better understand my
problem.

Thank you so much for taking time to read this.
Chris Heffner
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