Brett D Bannon wrote:
>
> I need some Advice!
>
> Have Hive that swarmed, and after swarm left for who knows where I
> decided to split the double bodies with the hopes of getting two hives.
> Upon splitting I realized that most of the queen cells were between the
> two bodies and seemed to be destroyed upon splitting.
> I went ahead with the split and waited 23 days before I had a chance of
> looking into how this process had worked.
>
> Today May 6, I have no queens, if all the open cells showing no brood and
> no eggs is an indication, lots of honey and pollen.
>
> Question?  What could I have done to help make this double body split
> work better (not destroy the queen cells between bodies).
>
> Question?  If I add to each queenless split one frame from another hive
> will this be enough to help them raise a queen from a newly laid egg?
 
The important point to remember here is that LOTS OF BEES are the key to
making a split, not just having some queen cells.
I wouldn't have split a freshly swarmed hive at all.
Sure you have lots of queen cells, but you also have a depleted
population. The colony is weakened by the loss of the swarm and
splitting further weakens it.  To further complicate things it sounds
like you may have damaged all the viable queen cells in the process of
splitting.
 
I wouldn't force these bees to make a queen from a frame of brood now
either.  That would further weaken the colonies due to the fact that the
bees lost to attrition are not being replaced while they make the new
queen.  I would re-combine the splits and introduce a quality package
queen right away - assuming there are still enough young bees to make a
viable colony.
 
It's getting to that critical time of year (in most places in the
temperate zone of the northern hemisphere) when your colonies need to be
hitting peak population in order to produce a crop, or even to be strong
enough to go into winter.  If you want to split, find a hive hell-bent
on swarming and beat them to the punch.  If you're lucky, the disruption
might get them out of the swarming mood.  And one of your splits will
already have a queen.
 
Michael Reddell
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http://www.hotcity.com/~mwr