No eggs?

[buzzbee]

:? 2 questions
My sons have has two medium supers. They were new packages installed April 10.  Upomn inspecting last thursday there were a lot of bees in both of the boxes. I could not find the queen and did not see any eggs and only a couple larvae.I thought they may be getting crowded so I added a third medium. Today upon inspection I see a lot of the capped brood had emerged and I still see no eggs or larvae but I found the marked queen. What is up?
#2
My own package installed april 22 in a deep box is basically the same scenario with about 6 to 7 frames covered with bees. I added another deep with 10 frames of foundation today . Can the explosion of bee population cause the queen to quit laying?    I only saw drone cells no queen cells.

[Hi-Tech]

eggs can be very hard to see. Are you sure there were none there?

[Finsky]

I could not find the queen and did not see any eggs and only a couple larvae.

Difficult to say what have happened?  If there is no queen there should be queen cells.

This weekend I had 2 case in my hive. In both there were queen cells.

1) I destroy all queens cells a week ago. Now I looked and I saw the queen. I noticed that they had brood any more and no new queen cells. I killed the queen and gived another. Queen was very good to make brood and did it become sick or something? It is angry hive and I decided to kill queen at once.

2) A big hive and I thought that swarm had tried to go and returned. I remembered taht queens wing was clipped.

This weekend I hear PIIP PIIP sound and I met a queen. I made a nuc and next day it layed eggs!  I did not even noticed that it was old queen.

There was allready finished queens in cells and I made more nucs.

[Brian D. Bray]

The simple answer if it's queenless is to insert a frame of brood from another hive.  If they build supercedure cells amoung the brood pattern then you went queenless for any  number of reasons.  If no queen cells are built it may have been that the bees had already superceded the queen and the hive was in that eggless state before the new queen is mated and starts laying.

[Kris^]

In mid-may I found a virgin queen in my one hive that swarmed.  I moved it 2 1/2 weeks later to a neighboring farmer's field, and there were no eggs or brood in it then, but the bees were bringing in pollen and acting normal.  I did a complete inspection on it two days ago and still saw no eggs or brood.  I would think that if this strong hive had been queenless for a month, there woud be laying workers by now.  But there were NO eggs in the hive.  Out of an abundance of caution, I placed two frames of eggs and young brood into the hive from another hive.  I'll be able to check it again and see if there are any queen cells being made.

On the other hand, another hive I moved completely filled the super with honey in a week, but hadn't capped it yet.  I'll put another super on (past time, I know), but all I have left are supers of foundation.

-- Kris

[Apis629]

The bees (the queen mostly) will vary egg production to match the seasons and thier resources.  Did you use a thymol treatment for varroa at the time.  That can sometimes stop egg laying for a few weeks (usually 2-4).  If your queen is still there then expect egg production to pick back up soon.  Also, are you sure there's no egg.  Hold the frame, tilted, with the sun over your shoulder shining into the bottom of the cells.  This makes them much easier to see.

[buzzbee]

I have seen eggs up until this point in time. I am going to check again this afternoon ,weather permitting.

[Brian D. Bray]

When looking for eggs; envision a single magot in the bottom of a garbage can, now shrink the whole thing down to the size of a honey comb and that's basically what you're looking for.

[Michael Bush]

The eggs look more like miniture grains of rice.  Dry and hard looking.