anybody out there?

[burny]

four days ago i asked what i thought was a pertinent couple of questions . since then it has been viewed over 40 times but as of yet  no one has offered any insights .
      some one asked if they could keep bees in a totally enclosed system today and recieved 3 responses...?...am i missing something here ?
                    why am i being shunned ?  if my question was to stupid to warrant a responce at least please tell me.
               
                                        thank you,
                                              burny

[SherryL]

You're definately not being shunned Burny.  I don't have an educated answer to your question, so sorry I can't help.  I suspect no one can say for sure, maybe don't want to go out on a limb.  It sounds like everything is ok for now, no harm in waiting a few days anyway to check again, but this is only my second season with my bees, so I'm not really experienced enough to say.  Sorry.

sherry

[Horns Pure Honey]

Burny, you are not being shunned. I as a mod ask questions and only get a few post back. Sometimes a subject goes dead for a few days and then all of a sudden it floods. I post in a ton of the post and sometimes I cant even find something to say about the subject. We all have a saying in here, There is no such thing as a dumb question, the only dumb question is the one you dont ask. bye :D

[Michael Bush]

It's difficult to diagnose a hive you can't see.  You say you see eggs and larvae but no capped brood.  I would expect capped brood this time of year, even in Vermont.

But sometimes there is a break in the brood cycle because of a supercedure or a swarm or a lack of pollen.  It can take 28 days to get from when an old queen died to when a new queen is laying, so you often find a broodless colony, or one with eggs but no capped brood that is just not up to that point again.  It's easy to mistake the reflection in the bottom of a cell (especially one that had brood in it before) for an egg or larvae.  Huber commented on this back in 1791 or so and it's still true.  Unless you're quite certain of what an egg looks like, it's possible there are none.

As far as where an egg should be, they aren't standing when they are first layed.  They go through stages and one of those stages is the standing egg.  It happens just before they hatch.

If you have other hives and you're in doubt about the state of a queen, my standard operating procedure is to give them a frame with eggs on it from another hive.  That way they have the option to supercede a failing queen, or raise one if they don't have one.  Usually if you give the bees the resources they will take care of things.