Problems with splits and queens who can't tell the time, Any ideas?

[russ21]

Hi, apologies for the long post but I could do with some advice.
Following a long period of awful weather over the 'summer' I found a couple of weeks ago that my strongest hive had created loads of swarm cells. There was still plenty of space, no food back filled into the brood or any other indicators leading up to this so unexpected and I assume the weather has kept them in and made them more likely to swarm?
Anyway at risk of potentially loosing a swarm I decided to artificial swarm them which went fine and I left the queenless half alone for long enough to have queens hatch out.
Just returned from a weeks holiday, did a check today on all my colonies (about 7-8 days after the new queens should have hatched) and found this relating to the artificially swarmed colony...
Virgin Queen Half - no sign of new brood, two old queen cells have clearly hatched (with open lids) and the others have all been eaten into from the side. I couldn't find a virgin queen (but it is still a busy hive and I had little time to check)
Mated Queen Half - everything looks really good, great brood at all stages, stores, no disease, good brood pattern BUT they have begun two supercedure cells which have been laid into and are a few days from capping off.
I'm amazed that they want to do this as the queen (only born last year) seems great and while I'm willing to accept the colony knows her better than I do I wonder how much of this intent might just be caused by such poor weather and extra indoor time?

I am tempted to leave the virgin queen half for a bit longer in the hope that a few more days of good weather might result in a mating, while it is very late there are still some drowns about. If there is no sign of this happening I'm happy to re-combine the hives ready for winter BUT what to do with the other half. If I re-combine them with queens in each they might fight an kill off the mated one and leave themselves stuffed for winter. Clearly if the mated half does supersede now there is no realistic time for mating before winter either.

So, I'm tempted to cut out the queen cells (which I wouldn't normally do) in the hope that I keep the decent mated queen colony intact as seems really good and as the temperature drops they'll hopefully stop trying to supersede in order to get through winter. This would then mean that if the virgin half doesn't sort itself out soon I can thoroughly check it find and remove any virgin queen then re-combine both halves for winter.

Anyway - what to do??? Ideas please.

Thanks,
Russ

[Jon]

A virgin has to be 5 days old before she takes a mating flight and she starts to lay a few days after this so she could not possibly be laying yet. You have 2-3 weeks before you need to start worrying.

You have probably got a good 6 weeks left for queens to take mating flights. I am still grafting and the larvae I grafted today will emerge as queens on 26th August and will be taking mating flights in September.

You can let the bees supersede the queen in the part with the laying queen or remove the cells to see what happens but more than likely they will just make more. I would keep a careful eye on the timing of the supersedure cells and reduce down to one before any queens emerge.

PS. Nice to see a new poster on the forum.

[russ21]

Thanks Jon,
I realise now that I made an error during the swarming by leaving too much brood with the original queen and therefore not removing their instinct to swarm. I'll see how it goes.

Thanks

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi russ21
From the day a queen cell hatched till the day of first eggs in a keiler mini nuc it took 27 days
That was this year when weather wasn't great
I was getting ready to give up but it just shows it can take a while and still be fine

[Emma]

My longest this year took just over 5 weeks to start laying. The dearth of nectar in July took me by surprise, and the combs were practically empty of food. I fed them some syrup, to get them in a good mood for uniting, got delayed by circumstances, & about a week later I found eggs. Good brood pattern now, & laying well.

[Adam]

I've had several 2014 queens that have been superceded this year so it does happen - even if they are apparently laying well. My expectation is that the first queen out will kill her younger sister and you won't get a swarm, but if you remove all but one queencell there will be no risk of swarming - and you have the queen still there at the moment. There's a decent chance of mating of both queens as Jon says. You are not alone in thinking that a new queen should be mated quickly; indeed some of the books imply such.