Unmotivated Queenless Bees

[Joe]

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of my hives no longer had a queen and had started building emergency cells.  Since honey production is not a major priority for me I decided I would allow them to raise their own queen, each week since that time I have been adding brood frames from some of my other hives to help maintain the population.  Just this past weekend I inspected the hive again and the bees still seem unmotivated and no eggs are anywhere to be found.

My question is this: If the bees have raised a new queen do they still remain in their unmotivated state until after she has mated and begun laying or do they perk up upon the new virgin queen's emergence from her cell?

[Finsky]

Hives motivation is strange thing. For example if hive is full and part of foragers hang outiside, it takes sometimes several days to get them to work when I have gived more space.

I use to kill several queens for main honey flow. Last summer I started seriously doubt  if that is really right act at all.  One big hive was so confused that it got very little honey. I have noticed something like that before.

[Ruben]

I just went through the same thing, dead queen around May 6  and they all but quit everything until June 4, I saw eggs from new queen they raised and everything is now back to normal.

[Brian D. Bray]

Lethargy from bees that are momentarily queenless is normal.  If the queen cells hatched you and the hive may just be waiting for the new queen to start laying.  I'd expect a turn-a-round in activity within a week once the queen starts laying.

[Joe]

I checked my queenless hive last night and all seems well, eggs are visible in the cells and the colony is back to normal.  Looks like the bees perked up upon laying as opposed to the emergence of a virgin queen.  I was a little worried that my experiment wasn't working out and so I placed an order for a new queen a couple of days ago, now, with an extra queen, I have a great excuse to convince my girlfriend that purchasing some more hive components is neccessary! :D

Thanks for all the replies!

[Apis629]

My bees experienced a short period of queenlessness after a swarm in early April.  Now, the brood pattern has MASSIVELY improved.  I did, however, dodge a bullet on that one.  A local study found 89% of swarms captured were africanized.  Still no real aggression in that colony...