No brood in my swarm

[ROACHMAN]

One of my colonies swarmed last Saturday. I caught in and hived it, just inspected it this morning (8 days later) and coudnt find the queen and no brood. I noticed that they had started building some queen cells. I have transfered a frame of eggs out of another hive so they can hopefully make a new queen. The bees are going to be over 4 weeks old by the time the queen emerges, then she has to mate, lay eggs etc. Will all the workers die of old age before the brood hatches. Are rgey doomed ? Would it be better to buy a queen ?

Help

 

[xwb]

I'm sure others will be able to provide you with a much better answer but you probably just have a virgin queen, you may not have found her because she was out mating, too small or just hiding! Give them some more time, you should see workers polishing cells ready for laying and if they get low on bees, nothing stops you putting in a frame of brood (so long as they can support it)

 

[ROACHMAN]

the queen was marked and def went in the hive with the workers, maybe she re swarmed but why didnt all the workers go with her ?

 

[oliver90owner]

Perplexed!

Swarms have queens. If no queen, the bees soon return to the hive.

Collecting a swarm entails getting thre queen - or the bees reurn tocluster around the queen.

Losing a queen while hiving a swarm is difficult - that is why they are (historically) hived by 'running them in' after tipping the cluster onto a sheet on an inclined board. Done in the evening reduces the risk of them leaving.

Now, how/why exactly are they building queen cells if there is no brood?

Seems like damaged queen to me, and the first eggs are going towards supercedure.

A month in the life of a colony means very little. You have seen that bees live for many months during the winter, so should not necessarily be a problem now.

If they dwindled, you could still unite the remains with your other bees, so what is the real question/problem here?

RAB