Strange looking brood

[ziffabeek]

Hi Everybody! 

I was hoping you could help me with a strange brood question.  Unfortunately the pics aren't that great, but any thoughts would be appreciated.

This was a little swarm that Mikel collected from our one 'client' on April 1.  It was a fair sized swarm and he saw the queen when he caught them.  we checked it maybe 2 weeks ago, saw the queen and thought all was good.  Checked it yesterday and there was only a handful of bees, one frame of nectar and  2 frames of brood. I did not see a queen. Brood looks very strange to me.

The pictures aren't the best, but the brood looked 'skinny'  and kind of grainy.  Even the more developed larva looked kind of dryish.  some of the smaller larva had black spots on them that didn't look like eggs or mites, but more like tar or ash or something.  I did the stick test the capped brood and no roping. What came out was white, not brown.  the half out bee I didn't do, they did.  It was really weird.  I've never seen anything like it.  They had lots of pollen and a whole frame of nectar, no capped honey yet, but I think they had the resources.  We did get a couple of cold rainy spells in the last 2 weeks.

What do you think this is? Hopefully not a disease? Here are the pics.  I may try and see if I can get better ones tonite.  When I looked at them this morning, I realized I didn't get the sun into the cells enough.

http://s65.photobucket.com/user/liz73592/library/strange%20brood?sort=3&page=1

Thanks for any help!

love
ziffa

[10framer]

looks like it could be a drone layer and i can't tell if i'm seeing flash or if the young larvae look mis-shaped.  if they are it's probably been chilled.

[rwlaw]

Ya, if you only have a handfull of bees, probably chilled brood, like 10framer says. You'll probably find all those capped drone cells dead also.