Prior to the Brazilian Pepper honey flow this fall we made a few splits to try and prevent our strong hives from swarming. That did help us save our old queens, and they are doing just fine. What we forgot to check on after a week was how many queen cells had been made in the hives we left queenless. The strongest hive had several queen cells and after the first queen emerged they swarmed. Darn it!
Not to worry, we were prepared and we caught them. We are not sure if we will leave them as a new hive yet. We might combine them with another hive after the honey flow so they won’t be weak going into winter.
Beelievable 