One of my three hives has no brood. There are however two empty queen cells and lots of bees. How long should I wait to see if they re-queen themselves before I buy another queen? thanks
I don't think I'd risk that, it might be just as easy to take a frame of brood (bees brushed off) from another hive and let them re-queen themselves.
There was brood early this spring so I thought the empty queen cells I saw yesterday was evidence that they were in the process of re-queening now. Is this possible?
You know it is hard to say .Has the queen emerged ? Or is the queen being made ?Did you look for the Queen? If there are no eggs in a few days I would get
a queen or give them a frame of brood with some new eggs to make a new queen
kirk-o
if you say you see no brood it means they CAN'T raise a queen. those queen cells could be from last year.
-if they really don't have any brood you can give them a frame of young OPEN brood to raise a queen.
-if you have one hour you can read how to give them PROPER brood properly inserted to get a better queen
-buy a queen and add her
It might be safer to wait and see if there are no longer any worker cells being capped in there. Queens won't lay as many eggs if there's bad weather all the time. I know first hand that eggs are almost imposable to see. And they would be producing Queen Cells anyway in anticipation for a swarm.
If you give them brood and they build more queen cells then they don't have a queen. If they don't build more queen cells then they have a queen that isn't laying.