Hi Danny, great to watch your 'journey'. Pity you missed spotting your queen first time around - but hey welcome to bee keeping it happens to us all - all of the time! You started your video with the bees not drawing out the wax on your super frames - now you know why - because although there was a good number of bees in the box they had decided to swarm. So first off congratulations on preventing them from swarming! However, if you leave your 'hive one' for three weeks with three queen cells and all of your flying bees then you are very likely to create a swarm - possibly more than one swarm!. In fact I would bet that if you went into that hive again in three or four days time you will find more than three queen cells in there. Why? There were still frames with eggs on in that brood box and those flying bees will make some emergency queen cells. With so many flying bees and queen cells you could easily raise two (or more!) queens from that one box - but you would need some nuc boxes. One frame with a queen cell in a nuc box plus a frame of brood and a frame of stores would be ideal. Two nuc boxes = six frames. That still leaves five frames in your brood box. So you will need twelve new made up frames. It works best if you can take the nuc boxes away a couple of miles - so that the flying bees can't fly back to your 'hive one'. Your 'hive two' with your queen in I would check after four days. Just to make sure there are eggs there and that you haven't missed another queen cell in the making. If after you have taken away the two nuc boxes with their queen cells in you can see there are many more flying bees going to 'hive one' than there are going to 'hive two' you can switch their positions - but if they look much the same don't bother. Out of interest if you had put all of the frames with queen cells on into a nuc box then they would be unlikely to swarm - when there are two many queen cells and not enough bees to look after them all, then the bees will destroy most of them.
Ahh thanks for the advice really helps, I do have 2 nec boxes but I may struggle to take them 3 mikes away as I don’t have anyone that would hold them for me that’s my only struggle
@@dcleal1 You don't have to take them away - it's just easier that way. You can still make up two nuc boxes and keep them in your garden. It is just that you can't lock up the entrance and open it again two miles away and keep your flying bees in the box. So you will loose some flying bees from your nuc box back to your brood box. In order to compensate for the loss of flying bees you shake in plenty of bees. You will keep the nurse bees. And, give them something to nurse - ie at least one frame with capped and open brood on it. If they are nuc boxes with built in feeders give them some feed.
Ahh cool, bit like what I have done with number 2 hive then, would you recommend taking any frames out the number 2 hive as well as frames out number 1 hive to make the 2 nucs up with..?
@@dcleal1 Looking at how strong your colony was before you split the two boxes I don't think you will need to. If you had three hives I may have said shake in a few bees from the supers of two hives - bees from three hive put together won't fight. But that is for another year.
Your hive with the queen in just needs a check in four days - just to be sure there isn't a queen cell in there that you have missed. Four days and see eggs - so even if you don't spot the queen you know she is there when you see eggs.
