I did a walk away split on May 3rd of a top bar hive and here is the
procedure I followed.  I looked for the queen and inspected for queen cells
and cups.  I looked in all the queen cups for signs of activity and they
all looked dry. No queen cells were present.  I took every other bar and
moved it to the next top bar hive.  I added some new, blank bars where the
comb wasn’t quite straight or aligned with the bar.  I closed up both hives
and left them alone and did not open either hive for 10 days.



In general, the original hive was much higher pitched and louder for about
two days following the split.  The second hive, seemed to calm down and
begin sounding normal but with reduced flight activity (due to loss of
foragers).



At the 10 day inspection (May 10th), the second hive, had normal
distribution of larvae sizes and the queen was found and marked.  The queen
cups in this hive were in the original condition as the day of the split.
The conditions were different in the original hive during the 10 day
inspection; the bees were actively involved in building comb and storing
nectar.   We also found 12 queen cells, 11 along the outside edges where
the original queen cups were located and one drawn queen cell on the mid
face of a comb.



I split the original hive again and put half the queen cells in a third top
bar hive and gave them top extra bars nurse bees.  On May 20th I inspected
both hives with the queen cells and each had a queen cell with the classic
sign of a queen emerging (round hatch cut on the bottom of the peanut) and
the other queen cells were empty. They were all opened from the side and
the queen removed after the first queen stung them to death.



My observation is that it the most likely answer is the bees moved the
eggs.  It seems hard to believe that 11 queen cups would have eggs in them
before I split the hive.


Chuck Jachens

Rescue, California

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