So I put the new queen in the hive in her queen cage and the bees were all over the cage. Four days later they had eaten the candy plug and released her. I left the hive alone until yesterday. When I opened the hive yesterday, there was no queenless roar, but there is no brood, no eggs, no larvae and her majesty was not running around with her red dot on her back, at least I didn't see her.
You may remember that when I first discovered the queenless state of the hive, before the queen arrived, I put in a frame of brood and eggs. That frame is now empty of all brood, and there is a queen cell which has been ripped open on the side, indicating that there has been a viable queen in the hive. I saw no other queen cells or any capped brood or brood of any kind. In other words, there were no regular queen cells opened at the tip. As Michael pointed out, maybe there is a virgin queen who hasn't mated yet, or the new queen was in fact a virgin rather than mated queen.
For safety against queenlessness, I put another frame of eggs and brood into this hive, but I don't want to go through all of this again. There are tons of bees in this hive. If the hive doesn't make a queen, I'd like to combine it with another hive.
Does that sound like a reasonable plan?
Would you do a newspaper combine if I did this?
Linda T in Atlanta