Hello all! My name is Justin, this is my second year now working with bees and my first year actually having my own. I find it to be a great hobby and I'm amazed a little more everyday as I learn about these creatures. I started out with my first hive on 5/26/12. I received an established split/nuc from my wife's grandfather who has around 15 hives. Unfortunately it looks like the queen in the nuc either swarmed or died a day or two before I received it. TUpon my first inspection (about 3 days after placing my hive) there were 7 queen cells, 3 capped, 4 uncapped, with a healthy sized bee population. The queen cells were placed around the center of the frames which came from the nuc, and 1-2 on each frame. I could not find eggs anywhere in any of the frames. After doing another inspection this past Wednesday I found only 2 capped queen cells remaining and the rest had been mostly disassembled. I looked, but could not pin point a queen. On the 2 most center frames in the hive I saw 1 egg laid in nearly every empty frame and got very excited, however after reinspecting again last night I found that now 4 of the original 5 frames have eggs in them, but the outermost frames had many cells with 4-6 eggs in each cell, most liad flat in the cell and over top of one another. I'm not sure if this is laying workers or just a new queen that hasn't figured it out yet. The 2 center frames still had one egg standing on end or small larva in each cell. I've been afraid to remove the remaining queen cells for fear of not having a good queen. The bees seem to have a heavy taffic pattern with several entering and leaving the hive every couple of seconds and have a steady flow of nectar and pollen coming in. There appear to be no signs of mites. They have started to draw out comb on the 5 empty foundations I inserted with the 5 established nuc frames. The bees are very calm and do not seem to be worried. So, I'm not sure of what, if anything, I should do. Any advice would be very appreciated!! Sorry for such a long first post!