Will she start laying again?

[kansas]

Hello all!  Wondering if I can get some opinions of my situation.

Background:  (new and first hive) Bees started to draw and cap queen cells about 3-4 weeks ago and I was late putting a second hive body.  Put on the second hive body and continued to cut out queen cells until there were no more open brood cells to rear queens.  The queen stopped laying before all this in prep for swarm.  The bees began backfilling brood chambers with honey. 

Now, I have been feeding them syrup to mock "extreme pasture" which I have heard and read supress swarming.  It seems they are not going to swarm, but I definately have a queen that stopped laying in prep for swarming and am wondering if she will start up again?  The capped brood have probably all emerged since Saturday when I last checked.  :?

[qa33010]

    Have you seen the queen if you have no eggs or open brood?  Were the queen cells swarm, supersedure or emergency?  Is there a chance that you missed a cell and may have a young queen who hasn't bred or started laying yet?  They may have swarmed also.  Do they seem more defensive?  If yeah they may not have a queen if the old one left with a swarm. 

I know I'm missing something here.  There are a lot wiser heads here than mine.

[rdy-b]

sounds like you do not have a queen at all. dose the colony roar loudly or is it quite. thats the first thing i notice when i open a lid. many things could have happen (need to know if you actually see a queen ) how many cells did you cut out ? if you determine Therese no queen purchase one and pick up where you left off RDY-B

[Bennettoid]

sounds like you do not have a queen at all. dose the colony roar loudly or is it quite. thats the first thing i notice when i open a lid. many things could have happen (need to know if you actually see a queen ) how many cells did you cut out ? if you determine Therese no queen purchase one and pick up where you left off RDY-B

Thats what I was thinking.

[kansas]

Hello everyone! 
Thanks for the replies. 

The crazy thing is, is that I do have a queen.  I found and marked her about 10 days ago.  And, they haven't swarmed. 
They were getting ready to, but all the swarm cells were cut out.  I have somehow kept them from swarming by doing this (they eventually turned to forming emergency queen cells at a point when the queen wasn't laying and they had to go to still open brood to rear queens) feeding them syrup (extreme pasture?) and adding the second body. 

I don't feel like they are going to swarm but am wondering if the queen will start laying again?  Anybody ever experienced this? 

[Kathyp]

if you are sure you have a queen, you may need to open up that bottom brood box and swap full frames with empties from the top.  i don't have a lot of experience with this either, but i do have a hive that had refused to move up into the second box, and had completely crammed the bottom with brood, honey, etc.

by moving brood and full frames into the top, and putting empty frames in the bottom, they moved up and are finally starting to expand.  for whatever reason, the queen simply would not move up and lay, without some "encouragement"  :-)

[Brian D. Bray]

Restimulating a queen to lay in the condition of an aborted swarm usually requires placing a couple of undrawn frames at the edges of the brood chamber.  The queen needs the imput of building comb (as if she had actually swarmed) to reactivate her laying.  This is why keeping an open brood nest is a good swarm management tool. 
Attempting to Abort the swarming instinct is not a good idea, you can loose the queen to swarming with no replacement available when the queen swarms a week before the new queen is due to hatch. You can cause to queen to go fallow (as she is now) for extended periods, or you can end up with a alying worker.  There are a few more possibilities too.

If you note a hive in the swarm mode it is much better to do a split by taking the old queen and moving her to a new hive and letting the new queen(s) hatch.  Then, if you want, you can kill the new queen and recombine the hive or go with 2 hives.  Your choice.

Swarming is still not out of the picture even if you do get your queen to laying again.  It is possible that as soon as she starts to lay again the hive will develop more queen cells. 

If putting undrawn frames in the brood chamber doesn't activate your queens egg laying then you'll still have to do a split and treat one as queenless and take the appropriate action for that situation.

2nd rule of Beekeeping: Never destroy queen cells.  Use them to your advantage. 

[rdy-b]

What is the first rule? :lol:

[Brian D. Bray]

Let the bees be bees.