Bad time to go on vacation

[keeper007]

My family went on vacation about a week and a half ago. we got back yesterday. i checked my bees first thing i noticed was that there was hardly any bees in the top super so i looked in the lower super where there was more bees. in the second brood box that i had just added there was some capped brood but no young brood all the cells that did not have capped brood had honey  they were also drawing new comb (i just added this box a few weeks ago) in the last brood box there was no young brood lots of honey and many capped and uncapped queen cells

i think they swarmed while i was on vacation
how long will i have to wait for the queen to start laying again?

[latebee]

Hi Keeper,
      Sometimes eggs or very young brood are very difficult to see,try holding your frames into the sun at an angle so that the bottom of the comb is getting sunlight. If you have old eyes( like mine) try strong reading glasses or a magnifying glass. The fact that there are queen cells on a frame tells me that there are also eggs in those frames .Swarm cells are almost always on the botom third of the comb while supercedure cells normally are built in the upper portion of a frame. If they have swarmed, you can expect to wait about  40 days for new brood to emerge,depending on the weather.

[Apis629]

The same thing happened to me when I was gone for 2 weeks in latvia.  I lost  3 supers worth of honey to SHB.

[keeper007]

      Sometimes eggs or very young brood are very difficult to see,try holding your frames into the sun at an angle so that the bottom of the comb is getting sunlight.

most if not all the cells that was not capped brood had honey in them

[latebee]

Well if they have honey in them then there are no eggs or larvae. Just curious about where the queen cells were located on the frames?

[keeper007]

they were on the bottom of the frames
there were bees festuning at the bottoms to

[Brian D. Bray]

The swarm done left.