Wheres my queen?

[GaDavid]

I picked up my bee's on Friday and brought them home.  4 hives and checking them today all looks well, except 1.  Using pierco frames and they appear almost fully drawn out.  Most of the cells have visible pollen or clear liqued.  What I dont see is brood.  I'm not even trying to look for the quenn but should'nt I be seeing brood by now, almost a week?

[bassman1977]

Being that it is a small hive yet, I would make sure to find the queen.  I would agree that you should be seeing brood and eggs, but maybe they are bringing in pollen and nectar faster than they can build comb.  Start with finding the queen first though.  That should be your priority.  If you are absolutely sure she is not there (check and double check again...she's sneaky), get on the horn with your supplier and also get a frame of eggs from one of your other hives and put it into the queenless hive.  Your supplier may or may not get you a new queen.  From what I saw with some other similar circumstances on the forum, the suppliers have been really good at getting a new queen to those who have had early queen deaths, missing queens, etc.

[GaDavid]

This particular hive is actually very large.  This was a caught swarm that was placed in the hive last Tues.  I have attempted to look for the queen but with the numbers that are in this hive its near impossible.  The BEEK I recieved the bees from told me that I should immediately place a super on top of the brood box because of the size of the swarm, he said it was the largest he's ever caught.  I don't see any queen cells which is good and I hope the girls are just busy drawing out the frames and collecting nectar and pollen.

[bassman1977]

Ah, well that's a lot different.  Grab a frame or two of eggs from another hive or hives and put them in the potentially queenless hive.  If she's there, oh well, now you have more bees, if she's not, they'll raise a new queen from the eggs.  Once you verify that there's queen cells on the eggs you put in (shouldn't take more than a day or two) leave them alone for a month.

[GaDavid]

Glad I got the black foundation...makes seeing eggs very easy.  No fears now, I'm able to see eggs in the cells upon todays inspection.  Now I'll just leave the ladies alone and let them do their thing. 

Thanks

[bassman1977]

Awesome!   :) :) :) :) :) :)