real puzzler about queen cells

[tandemrx]

O.K., visit buddies apiary last Saturday to help him with possibly queenless hive (new package this year).  He did have at least one swarm from is bee yard this year

Hive was certainly queenless.  Zero Brood, capped or otherwise.  There were 2 eggs in the entire two hive bodies and they were in cells that were half filled up with bright red pollen (random worker eggs?).  Otherwise no eggs, no larvae.

So, took a nice frame of eggs and larvae (no capped brood) from one of his other hives, marked the frame and put it into the queenless hive.  Then we figure we will check in a week to see if there was a virgin queen still working on getting going or if they would build queen cells.

Inspected the hive today  - 9 days later.  The frame we transferred with eggs and larvae had nice patch of now capped brood and about 7 distinct capped queen cells towards the bottom of the frame.  There were no new eggs or new larvae to be found in the hive (we went through both boxes).  So all as expected from a queenless hive and pleased that they are making a new queen.

Here is the puzzler.  On the frame facing the queen cells - a frame from the original queenless hive that had no eggs there were 2 large queen cells not quite capped with larvae and filled with standard white larvae food.  These were without a doubt queen cells and without a doubt had larvae in them.  We are sure it was from the adjacent frame, there is a minor possibility the queen cells were on the other side, facing away from new egg frame, but pretty sure these queen cells were actually on the side facing the transferred frame.

So . . . . how did a hive that had essentially zero eggs come up with queen cells on a frame that shouldn't have had eggs in it???   :?

My understanding is that research has shown that worker bees do not move eggs.

1.  Is it possible that these were laying worker drone eggs that the workers were building in big queen cells thinking that they would turn into a queen (especially maybe since they were just given a ready supply of fertile eggs nearby)?

2.  Am I wrong in my understanding that workers bees don't move eggs?  Even if they did move them, isn't it a bit late for them to not be capped from 9 days ago when all the other cells were capped?  They still had a little ways to go to cap these two queen cells.   :?

I am really stumped on this one.  We went meticulously through the hive and there are not eggs in it, so no newly mated queen at this point.

[Kathyp]

i would vote for one.  sure isn't something i have seen although i have seen attempts a crappy queen cells in laying worker hives.  i think JP wrote about workers in queen cells.  you might be able to do a search for that on.

[caticind]

Did you notice the bees behaving as though they were queenless?  Any roar?  Aggression?

One more question: how's your weather been?  Hot and dry?  Any flow on?

I ask because two possibilities occur to me:
1) You actually still have the original queen in there, but she's seriously dysfunctional, so when she does manage to lay a couple of good eggs, the workers jump at the chance to try and make queens from those too.
2) You actually still have the original queen, but there's a really bad dearth where you are.  Some very good queens that are well adjusted to their local climate will stop laying temporarily before or during a dearth.  (This seems less likely since the workers are so eager to make a new queen...)