When was this marked queen introduced...?... and has she ever produced?
Are the other hives doing foraging?
Bill
Read the OP/.
First inspection of the year, so what is the liklihood of the queen not being there at least over the winter?
I would think that all colonies have brood by this time of the
season.
Two options: leave and hope - not a lot of hope, I would suggest - or get rid of the queen. Clearly once the queen is gone there is the problem of the colony going forward.
Now options re the queen:
Adding eggs would require a couple of weeks and likely result in a scrubby queen unless the beek reduces the number of queen cells (the first will definitely be emergency cells). There is also the problem of that new queen getting mated - a lottery in the UK in early May - so she could be only poorly mated or not at all, resulting in more forward-going problems!
Adding a sealed queen cell is an option which might shorten that period by a few days, but the same future possibility as above. More old bees remaining, but still a long time before new brood emerges, so a poor outlook for a decent crop.
Adding a virgin queen has the same sort of issues.
Introducing a laying queen (at some cost?) can lead to loss of that queen (beek doesn’t seem too experienced) and another three weeks or more before any new brood emerges, so the colony will be quite weak by then.
Those options would lead me (without hesitation, btw) to uniting or shaking out. The colony, IMO, is currently a dead loss and unlikely to be worth trying to save. Better to use the current bees (as long as not diseased) to bolster another colony possibly leading to an early split (when queen mating is more predictable) from a strong colony.
Simple, really when you think about the option time lines.
