No Eggs, No Brood but I have Queen Cells

[Steel Tiger]

 New package and the queen was released two weeks ago.  Every few days I went out to check the activity at the hive without going in. Two days ago there was no activity. Today there was, so I went in.
I checked all the middle frames and found no brood or eggs. There are four capped queen cells. If they killed the queen, how did they get capped queen cells without larvae? There were also a few empty, uncapped queen cells.
Any ideas on what to do? Wait? Get a new queen?

[asprince]

There must have been some eggs that you did not see.


Steve

[OldMech]

It happens quite often..  they do not like the queen provided for some reason.. usually because she was poorly mated, so they are replacing her. I tried ten packages last year, and had 9 of them supersede their queens before the summer was over. I let them do it, hoping for better genetics in the local drones.

[Foxhound]

Second what oldmech said. It is really common for packages to requeen themselves as soon as they get the chance.

What he does is what I do to. Let the bees work it out.

[Jim134]

New package and the queen was released two weeks ago.  Every few days I went out to check the activity at the hive without going in. Two days ago there was no activity. Today there was, so I went in.
I checked all the middle frames and found no brood or eggs. There are four capped queen cells. If they killed the queen, how did they get capped queen cells without larvae? There were also a few empty, uncapped queen cells.
Any ideas on what to do? Wait? Get a new queen?

      Are these 100% Russian bees ?

You do realize Russian bees will make complete queen cells without a lava inside the only way you can tell is by candling cell.


              BEE HAPPY Jim 134 

[Jim134]

Something you may like to read  IMHO  this answers a lot of questions about package bees and why they do so poorly. queens are too young when put into a package at most bee breeders

I've seen one that focused on Ovariole development, but here's one that just looks at sperm counts and suvivability:
https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/downloads/03-049

A synopsis:
Research has shows that the age of the queen
when removed from the mating nucleus colony has
a significant impact on the survival of that queen at
2 and 15 weeks after introduction into another
colony.
14 days after introduction to the new colony:
There were low survival rates of queens caught at
14 days compared with 21 days of age.
At 21 days 82.5% of the queens survived.
This further improved to an average of 90% survival
for queens caught at 28 days of age.
The benefits of older caught queens (28 days) are
further illustrated after 15 weeks. Losses of queens
caught at 21 days can be expected to be 30.5%
compared to losses of queens caught at 28 days to
be 21%.
This research clearly indicates that queens caught
at 28 days for introduction into another colony are
better in the long term as far as survivability is
concerned.

From here:
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/305097/Buying-queen-bees.pdf


       BEE HAPPY Jim 123 

[Steel Tiger]

There must have been some eggs that you did not see.


Steve

I would think that if there was time for them to build and cap queen cells, there was time for larvae and capped brood around the queen cells.
I'll take another look first thing in the morning. Maybe I was paying more attention to the cells than the comb and didn't notice the larvae. I was in and out of there pretty quick.

[Steel Tiger]

      Are these 100% Russian bees ?

You do realize Russian bees will make complete queen cells without a lava inside the only way you can tell is by candling cell.


              BEE HAPPY Jim 134 

They're Italians. They were the only thing available so late in the season when I found the hive was a deadout.