One other thing: Walk-away splits are just that. Don't keep peeking. Moving the frames and boxes can damage the few cells that are built. The cells could be anywhere and denting them consigns the new queen to death. Wait several weeks before looking. 21 days after the split is a good target date for looking for new eggs and young brood. Don't worry about wasting bees if they do not requeen, since the bees in that divide will be fresh, not having been used up in brood rearing. Also the broodless period will be very hard on varroa and reduce the load drastically. When found queenless, failed splits make a tremendous booster to drop onto a weaker hive. Usually they will not be robbed out or abandoned, assuming you followed the rules and only did the splits on a building flow period and be full of bees, pollen, and honey. This method of splitting may not maske the most intensive use of the bees and equipment, but is very economical on labour and not too hard on the bees, especially if the owner is not a frame moving and frame scraping fanatic. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html