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It would be good to know the timings of what happened, otherwise it's guesswork.

If you make up nucs in the same apiary, especially without a queen, it's not uncommon for pretty well all the bees to fly back home leaving frames without any bees, and a cold queencell if that's what's in it.

Introduced virgins are a lot more likely to disappear than ones that emerged in the colony.

Pleased you want to move away from leather gloves which are best suited to pruning the roses rather than beekeeping. You will find that the thinner the gloves are, the better you can feel what you are doing and you will crush less bees as a result. Branded Marigolds last longer than the cheap...

It would appear that the queen has serious issues or has gone. Either the colony makes a new one or the beekeeper obtains a new one.

"..is it just because it’s messy and you’ll lose some bees?" That's a fairly good reason not to do it! :) Unless thre are other reasons, you can wait until you see the temperament of the resultant bees once the queens mate and their brood has emerged and more or less takes over the colony. Then...

Walkaway splits make emergency queencells - the name says it all. Yes they may be fine in some cases but it shouldn't really be the plan. There are better ways.

You can make your own nucs - no need to buy in. For local spring nucs - overwintered ones sell quickly and mine are spoken for by the end of Feb. There should be no need for concern about disease and a decent overwintered nuc will, quite possibly, get some honey in the year. The weather is not...

Many new beekeepers panic and cut out queencells to stop swarming (before they check that there are eggs or the old queen is still present). In this case, at this time of year, if the colony produces a queencell, it's most likely a supercedure queencell (probably just 2 or 3) so I would leave...

Newspaper unite over a queenless nuc is the easiest method. Then piece of queen excluder between the two to keep the queen down. After 3 weeks all the brood has emerged and being used with the colony below the excluder; If you keep topping up the feeder during this time, you will probably have...

Had a similar thing last year - the queen was on the leg of the hive stand at about 8 pm with a few attendants. I assumed that the colony had swarmed (She was clipped and marked) so put her in a cage and into a queenless nuc to look after her. The next day I went through the double brood hive...

If you have removed the queen, the colony will now draw emergency queencells as it's not supercedure any more. (Been there, done that). So you will need to ensure that your selected queencell emerges without the emergencies or you might lose the first queen out to a swarm with a later q/c giving...

I've had a September virgin swarm - none too big. She mated and got through winter OK. If you have such a thing and a queen starts to lay, adding a frame of brood from another colony makes a huge difference to the new colonies viability.

A Cast queen still (potentially) needs a couple of days before she is mature enough to mate. Then you have a month or so before she is stale, however she need decent weather for her nuptials, so after a couple of days of mating weather she should be done and should start to lay a few days after...

"If my calculations are right you would need to start your drone production by end of February and your queens by end of March if you want to compete in the early season queen market... unlikely to be achievable by all accounts." Definitely not in my part of the world.

A mated queen will be laying withing a few days. If you are unsure, you can always pop in a frame of brood (inc eggs and young larvae) after a week or so and see what happens. The brood will inhibit laying workers if there is no queen and will indicate whether there is a queen present or not.

Sadly not! I have just checked. My old refractometer (which I tend to believe from experience over a number of years) reads 27.5% water content with both light olive oil and extra virgin from the kitchen cupboard. This ties in with HEMO's figures. My new (ATC) refractometer read 23.4% which was...

My old refractometer has a broken flap so bought a new one on ebay as I KNOW i will lose the flap one day. The old one says 20% when the new one says 16% for the same honey. Previously I used some oil I purchased from Thornes on the old one and it started to melt the plastic flap although the...

So are you saying that you will add 2 frames to the remaining bees in the old nuc? The old nuc that could have had laying workers in?

A driver for B+ is to have well-behaved bees due to tragic circumstances he has just mentioned.