I think I just removed E Q Cell

[Cedar]

Hi all,
I was doing first inspection of year on first frame with brood on there were two play cups and a queen cup with occupier, removed said cell and carried on with inspection only to realize that there did not appear to be any eggs and only a hand full of capped worker and quite alot of drone. The frames are very untidy although nest is half way between top and bottom brood box, do you think it would be a good idea to put frame in with eegs on. There were a lot of drone bees in this hive. They have plenty of stores and pollen, and are flying well.

Thanks Cedar

 

[Midland Beek]

Have a read about drone laying queens and laying workers in your bee book.

 

[MJBee]

No eggs and a lot of drone brood = failing/failed queen.

A test frame of eggs and very young larvae will tell you in 3 days whether you accidentally culled a supercedure cell.

 

[RoofTops]

Whilst not perhaps answering your question your problem does illustrate one of the Golden Rules of beekeeping - do not remove all the queen cells until you have either found eggs or ideally the queen herself. I have done this more than once and have lived to regret it. If the queen joined the celestial throng a week ago there is no way the bees can make a new queen if you remove the last of their queen cells.

A frame of eggs would be a useful test but it is early in the year to try and start rearing queens - weather and lack of drones could be problems.