No that is not the name of a new movie, but it describes my situation here. It is slightly complicated, but here goes. I had one hive of two to make it through the winter, and it was going full bore this spring. In the meantime, I bought another hive, and nuc, as well as captured 2 swarms, so I am up to 5 now. The swarms at 17 days post capture showed no sign of eggs or brood so when I went looking in my other hives for brood, I found evidence of open queen cells in each of the other hives, and not a lot of brood anywhere. So apparently all had swarmed. One hive had an unopened queen cell. However, plenty of bees were found. And then to top it off, I found my queen in the overwintered hive dead under a frame that same day. So basically, 5 hives with no evidence of a healthy queen. So I was able to get 2 queens from a local beekeeper, and also got 4 frames of brood, to requeen my two biggest hives. That has hopefully corrected that problem. Now I have 2 queens coming from Rossman Apiaries which should be here next week, which I intend to put in the swarms. However, I have no brood to put in those swarms. (I am assuming the hatching queen in the other hive will take care of that one) The question is, can I just put a queen in the two swarms, without any brood comb? Will she just pick up and go to work when she gets out of the cage? Both swarms are working like mad--they have drawn out comb beautifully and put up a lot of honey thus far, just no queen. My thought on the missing queens--I suspect the maiden voyage of the new queens is a perilous one around here--I have an active purple martin colony of 60+ birds, and they may have trouble making it back from their honeymoon!