Looks like they've swarmed

[frenchbees]

At the beekeeping lesson yesterday I described the state of my hive. (No larvae, sealed brood and empty cells, no queen cells on the bottom of the frames but 2 sealed supercedure cells) General consensus is that they swarmed about 6 to 8 days ago.
Advised to leave supercedure cells and not buy in Queen.
What should I have done differently, been inspecting every 5 days looking for queen cells prior to AS.
Sigh.

 

[enrico]

look more carefully, you kissed one!!!

 

[mandabow]

queen may have been damaged in inspection, by accident or randomly stopped laying.. queen who failed may well have been killed.. superseedure cells normally means they don't swarm.. what's the point of swarming with a failed or failing queen she won't be up to starting a viable colony.

if she had died not at the hands of the hive then there would be emergency cells. if she was prepping to swarm there would be swarm cells. 2 cells in the centre of a frame to me says no swarming as yet

however superseedure cells you may have one caste swarm with the first queen out (much less likely than a caste with emergency queens though)

if you don't think bee numbers are down much - (you will obviously have a little bit left as those dieing naturally will not ahve been replaced with young) then i wouldnt think that there has been a swarm at all.

Edited to add.. lol unless they are reading the same book as the other post at the top of the forum

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=10690

in the words of the illustrious Pooh.. you never can tell with bees