Lessons in Making Your Own Queen

Checked in on the new hive today and evidence of how much stress a queenless split places on the bees is quite evident. There are lots of dead bees on the bottom screen, to include two pupae, and one frame has waxy moths. I killed one wax moth larvae and was tempted to pull that frame, but there are so few brood in that hive right now that I don't want to weaken it further by removing population. A strong hive will kill the wax moth larvae so I'll keep an eye on it to see how things progress. Just another week or so and hopefully, I'll have a laying queen.

The original queen cell is gone, the queen cup that was to the left of it is now capped and there is a second queen cell on the right. (Both queen cells are visible in the picture.) I searched for some time for a possible new queen but as she is smaller than she would be were she mated, I cannot say she was definitely spotted, which further makes me believe that the bees removed that queen cell. In comparing last week's photo to this one, you can see that there is no trace of the first.

I put the feeder on and am giving them 1:1 sugar syrup with Honey B Healthy. I've gone from being excited last week, to now worried about the wax moths. Hopefully, these Russian bees will be able to hold it off until the numbers increase and they can then remove the problem.