Make a split with the queen
Find the queen. If you can’t find her today, inspect tomorrow or the next day, you will find her. Make a split with the queen, two frames of capped brood, and a frame of honey. Leave all the bees on each frame moved to the nuc to make the split. If the number of workers doesn't look adequate add more by shaking nurse bees off another brood frame or two. I try to find brood frames for the split that do not have young larvae, saving them for queen production. Move this split to another bee yard, or not. If you leave this split in the bee yard, robbing may develop. Reduce the size of the entrance to a small, 1/2 inch, opening. Feed this split so that it will grow strong. There are few foragers in the split, and the nectar flow is ending requiring feeding.
Feeder pails on nucs with migratory covers. A 1.25" (32mm) hole in the nuc cover with the pail centered over it gives the nuc a gallon of syrup. The brick keeps the pail on when empty.
This one-gallon feeder pail may be purchased from
Betterbee
Blue Sky bee supply
Betterbee has a two-gallon pail that I use to top feed 8 and 10 frame hives.
Feeder pail cleaning. A pressure washer will remove any propolis that gets in the stainless steel mesh in the cover. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser will remove mold on the inside of the pail.
Raise queens
The colony is now queenless. They will raise emergency queens, but they need help. A worker larva less than 36 hours old can be raised to be a queen, but the horizontal worker cell must be cut away (notched) to allow the workers to make a vertical queen cell.
All queen producers use young worker larva to raise queens. Most queen producers use a grafting tool to transfer the young larva into cups and then into a starter hive to start the queen rearing process. The notching method explained here is simpler than grafting.
The emergency queen rearing process has the added benefit of killing Varroa mites without miticides using the mite's reproductive biology at the end of a broodless period in the new colony.
Notch the cells of young larvae
Remove a frame of brood. Brush the bees off the frame into the hive. Walk away from the hive about 20 feet or more with the frame. You must be able to see the tiny, less than 36-hour-old larvae which will require reading glasses unless you have excellent eyesight. I remove my veil so I can see well with reading glasses. CAUTION, no protection from a veil can result in stings to the face.
How do you know you are selecting less than 36-hour-old larvae? They are tiny, not much larger than an egg. Typically they will be next to cells with eggs. The pool of royal jelly under the larvae is much larger than the young larvae. The larvae are the smallest you can find.
Cut into the cells 1/3 up from the bottom of the cell all the way to the foundation. Don’t touch the larvae. I use a razor blade to cut thru the cocoons in dark comb. From the cut to about one inch below the cut press or mash the comb down against the foundation to create enough room for the workers to make verticle queen cells.
Notch about ten to twelve cells in each frame. If you notch a few cells in a row, the workers can make every other cell into a queen cell because of the larger diameter of the queen cell.
The red line is the cut in the bottom 1/3 of the cell.
The cells below the notched cell are covered with the comb that is mashed against the foundation.
After notching each frame with young larva, return it to the hive. Place the notched frames in the middle of the deep super. Add more frames outside of the brood nest to replace the frames used in the split with the queen.
Reassemble the hive and let the workers raise the queens.
Wait seven days.
The next
It’s time to... will use the queens to make splits.
