Update - Possible Queenless Colony

[gwt_uk]

Hello all,

I posted two weeks ago about a possible Queenless colony and thought I would get some more thoughts after inspecting them at the weekend.

After finding no eggs, larvae or brood of any type two weeks ago I put in a test frame of eggs, larvae and capped brood from another colony. The inspection at the weekend revealed that the bees had capped the open brood on this frame and had not constructed any queen cells . However on two different frames I found single queen cups with single eggs in them. I couldn't see eggs anywhere else.

The colony still has a healthy population but the activity I observed from the hive entrance was greatly reduced. There was the odd one bringing back pollen and a lot of what looked like young bees hanging about the entrance not doing very much.

Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[beeno]

Did you see any polished cells? I would have thought that you have a newly mated queen in there that has not started laying yet. You may have missed eggs on other frames it is easily done. It takes three weeks without any brood for laying workers to take over.

 

[gwt_uk]

Thanks. It’s a double brood and the bottom was empty but the cells on most frames looked polished. The top box was full of honey so I moved some frames from the bottom box to the top to give the queen some space to lay.