Do hopeless queenless bees keep dead queen larvae in the colony?

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tchu

House Bee
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Did a split in one of my colonies on 7 May and the colony left queenless made emergency queencells. I opened that hive a couple of times to thin the cells down to only one cell and left the hive alone. After opening the hive on 9 June to look for a laying queen, I found no eggs, the bees seemed to have stored lots of brood food, and found no eggs. However, I did find 5 open queencells with larvae in and one closed queencell. I scooped all the larvae out of the queencells and their royal royal jelly wasn’t as runny as it normally is. The larvae were slightly yellow when I destroyed them. I’m no expert but I was under the impression that they looked dead but didn’t dry up completely because the strange looking royal jelly that was in their cells still possibly had a tiny bit of humidity in them. No other sign of weakness or disease in that colony, no foul smell, no they seem to be doing fine.

Since the closed queen cell had been closed for weeks, I opened it and saw same odd looking larva (not even looking like a proper pupa) and odd looking jelly. Going to requeen or introduce ripe queen cell.

Anyone had the same experience? Please do share! Thanks
 
I see; it could well have been. Puzzling though as that colony was very populated with bees, healthy, brood in 9 frames and super with plenty of nectar when they started putting emergency queen cells up.
 

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