Bitbybit
New Bee
I am a complete novice and I'm looking for some advice on how to proceed. I installed two nucs I bought into two brood boxes and have checked them weekly ever since. I have found the queen in one of them (she is marked) everytime I checked but never saw the other queen. To my untrained eye everthing seemed fine, bees seemed happy and they were busy collecting whenever the weather permitted. A couple of weeks ago I decided that I would make a determined effort to find the other queen but without any luck and I also found a queen cup on the face of one comb. I also noticed that the other hive was much more productive at building up stores. At this stage I was getting worried and I outlined my worries to the forum. I was advised not to worry about a single dry cup and that I should look for eggs rather than worrying so much about finding the queen. This made sense to me and I decided that as a newbe I was worrying too much. Yesterday I opened the hive and started looking at the comb properly rather than at the bees, now I realise that I have no capped brood or eggs!! Have I any options? Could I have a new mated queen? Do I move a frame of brood from the other hive and hope they can make an emergency queen? - is it too late in the year to get a mated queen? Would this just put the other hive under pressure? Do I need to try and buy a new queen? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.