Finally a day that I could check on my one surviving hive. Its been a brutal winter here and I have the only surviving bees on the hill, everyone else lost 100%. I inspected the hive thoroughly in bright sunshine and found no, as in zero, brood, larvae or eggs! Maybe 800 bees and no sighting of a queen. I have Russians and I know they are late to start so is it possible that there is actually a queen? It is not any more then an academic question at this point. We have gotten together and are looking for a local source of bees to get going with, but the bees where calm and all seemed to be busy and I would have thought that they would all have died out by now without a laying queen. As always I am trying to learn from others and their experience so that I will at least recognize what went wrong or what I may have done incorrectly.
You should have some kind of brood already. She should be ramping up the laying by february at latest. If you see nothing at this time of year, then you have cause for concern. At least you dont seem to have a laying worker. You woulld see all kinds of multiple eggs and lots of drone cells.
Get a queen in there before the workers start laying.
Chris
maybe 800 bees and no brood ? Even In your location I would call that a problem this time of year. You sure they aren't robbers ?