In the spring when making Splits here is a comman mistake that beekeepers make and wind up with a queenless hive.
When you split a hive a lot of beekeepers remove all of the queen cells from the original Hive to stop the Hive from Swarming.
Swarming is a natural thing for honeybees to do when the hive gets crowded. The Worker bees bring in pollen and store it in cells, the queen in the mean time is laying 1,000 to 1,500 eggs a day. Next thing you have is the worker bees and queen run out of any cells to store pollen or to put eggs in thus the nurse bees think the queen isn't doing her job and the replace her by making swarm cells. Now figure back about 16 days because that is the time it takes for a queen to emerge from a cell.
The hive is in the swarm mode 16 days prior. Now if you remove all the swarm cells from the hive and the Queen goes ahead and swarms then the Hive will be left Queenless.
I see this happen every year numerous times.
I get the call and the beekeeper is desperate and needs a queen yesterday.
When you split a hive leave at least one capped queen cell in the hive with the queen.
That way if she swarms you will still have a young queen to take her place.
