Is my Queen Dead ?

[Freddywasadevil]

Hi, i have a commercial hive on ten frame brood box, seven are quite busy with bees, there appears to be quite a bit of capped brood, a few larvae/pupae(little white grub looking things) and abot 60 capped drone cells and plenty of stores of honey and pollen, no sign of the queen but i could have missed her, one thing i thought a bit weird was one frame was almost entirely covered in drones, any thoughts ?

 

[REDWOOD]

You could have a laying worker or a drone laying queen, go back to your hive and have a look for multiple eggs in the cells as this is a laying worker, and if the queen is still there she might have run out of sperm so the eggs she lays are unfertilized and they become drones. How many frames of normal brood do you have

 

[Freddywasadevil]

Four frames of normal brood with the drone cells in the top corners of two of them

 

[REDWOOD]

That seems normal if the brood was in all stages,

 

[Freddywasadevil]

there were only about a dozen larvae on the frames in total, i didnt see any eggs but then again my sights not great and i am a new beekeeper

 

[tonybloke]

Hi, i have a commercial hive on ten frame brood box, seven are quite busy with bees, there appears to be quite a bit of capped brood, a few larvae/pupae(little white grub looking things) and abot 60 capped drone cells and plenty of stores of honey and pollen, no sign of the queen but i could have missed her, one thing i thought a bit weird was one frame was almost entirely covered in drones, any thoughts ?

was the inspection when the drones were all 'at home' ? if so, nowt to worry about, they were on a frame of uncapped stores, having a feed

 

[Torq]

....look for multiple eggs in the cells as this is a laying worker....

Disagree. One of my queens became a multiple and poor layer after the christmas break. Adding a frame of point of emergence brood kickstarted her into action. From a colony that had to be moved to a nuc in march, they are now back in a hive and on 7 full frames of BIAS and growing.

 

[Travelator]

You should normally expect to see about twice as many larvae as eggs, and about twice as much sealed brood as larvae (but a lot of people do have trouble seeing eggs).

If you have several frames of sealed brood, only a few large larvae and no small larvae or eggs, it would suggest that your queen hasn't been laying for about a week. If she was accidentally killed, you would expect to see sealed emergency queen cells. If she swarmed, it's just about possible that a virgin queen could have emerged and the queen cells could have been dismantled by now.

I think it would be a good idea to get the colony looked at by someone who can confidently identify eggs and different types of queen cell. If you can establish that it swarmed and that a virgin queen is present, then you should leave it alone for another two weeks. If you strongly suspect that it's queenless, you ought to try introducing a test frame with eggs from another colony (which is obviously difficult if this is your only one)

 

[Freddywasadevil]

She's not dead, she was just taking a break ! Can't see any larve but nearly both sides of a frame full of eggs. Thanks for all the advice I'm sure I'll be back for more.