Hi Dick,
Sounds like your bees are doing well.  With the open queen cell, they could have already swarmed - first check for eggs.  You can divide the hive into several nucs with one or two swarm cells for each and let them raise some queens for you if you want.  You could also try to split them but if the split has a virgin queen they will not accept a mated queen so you will loose the new queen and still have to wait until the virgin is mated and laying.  If they have eggs and a laying queen, splitting the hive and letting the split raise a new queen from a cell usually works and you can reunite the two parts together later if you want or let both develop and overwinter the new queen.  This usually works ok if the queen gets mated successfully ( sometimes they disappear ).

Good luck and I hope they recover and produce some honey for you.

blane



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Blane White
MN Dept of Agriculture
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