She looks Queenless!

[Hemlock]

Sigh.......................
No eggs or young larva.  Very few remaining capped brood.  Agitated bees.  Lots of ripped up looking queen cells.  No drones anywhere...

If that's the call I'll combine her top Deep box (loaded with honey) with another hive using newspaper.   I'll make sure all the bees are in that box too.  then freeze the bottom box & frames.



One queen cell had a hole in the bottom.  The others were torn up from the top.

[cam]

Are you sure you have no drones. I still have a few flying up here.

[Michael Bush]

More likely a virgin queen, but I don't know the supply of drones in your locality.  It's pretty late to be mating a queen, but they might have already succeeded and you just haven't seen the results yet.  Usually if they are queenless, and there is a hive nearby, most will move in with the queenright colony.  That and queenless hives in the fall, in my experience, get robbed relentlessly.

[Hemlock]

Not SURE about the drones but i saw my last, 2 months ago.  The neighbor last saw hers a couple of weeks ago.  There are several other beeks within a 2 mile radius, no telling what their situation is.  Likely the drones are gone.  The club meeting is this week so I'll see what they have to say.  Whatever I need to do I'll do next week after checking for new eggs.  All entrances are reduced to about an inch in width.

Will a virgin queen screw up a combine?

[tecumseh]

michael bush writes:
More likely a virgin queen,

tecumseh:
based on your description that would be my guess also.