Newton Abbot Beekeepers

I'm starting to show my total lack of experience here... any advice would be most welcome!

I've had a new colony sitting in the paddock since mid-April and everything has seemed to be going swimmingly, despite the fact that I've not managed to spot the queen once in all that time. All signs that there was a queen in residence were there - plenty of eggs & larvae and the general temper of the bees incredibly placid, so I assumed that the problem was more with my eyesight than the hive... up until now. I inspected the hive this morning and whilst it's looking great up in the supers (loads of honey being laid down) there was no sign of any new laying in the brood box. Needless to say, despite having had a good look around, there was no sign of the queen once again; however, the hive's buzzing with bees and so I've no reason to assume that they've swarmed with the old queen.

There seems to be a disproportionate amount of drones lurking around the place and I also came across what were unmistakably capped queen cells - four in total, which makes me think that something's happened to the queen and they're making supercedure cells. I left what seemed the most viable of the four, moving the frame to the middle of the brood box.

What thoughts? Is it likely that the hive is currently without a queen and, if so, was paring-down queen cells the right thing to do?

Hi Roger,
You say you have had the colony since mid April, so is this a split from another colony? If so is it a new Queen or last years Queen?

Based on what you have said, let us assume that the colony has not swarmed. Last month we had warm weather with lots of flowers available for the bees as evidenced by the amount of honey in the supers. We have had some cooler wet weather this month, I noticed in my colonies that stores in the brood boxes were reducing over this period and therefore the bees were on balance not bringing in the food, but rather consuming it. If a colony has less food coming in, then they will feed the Queen less and she will reduce her laying or may go off lay. Queens going off lay is particulary common in August when most of the flowers are producing seed rather than flowers and the amount of food coming in is dramatically reduced. The Queens laying rate during the year is driven by food coming into the colony and when commonly shown as a graph (in the perfect world) will show a gradual increase from March, peaking in mid summer and then declining towards autumn, with a second smaller peak shown when autumn flowering plants such as Ivy come into flower and her laying rate increases again with the increase in food coming into the colony.

Now lets deal with the appearence of Queen cells. There are several things which stimulate the workers to produce Queen cells.
1. Pheromones are an important part of maintaining a happy colony.The Queen gives off pheromones which prevent swarming, but as the colony grows the pheromone per bee reduces. You say your's is a large colony
She is not the only one giving off pheromones in the hive though;
2. the brood give off pheromones and a reduction of brood pheromone will stimulate the production of Queen cells. It is common for workers to produce Queen cups containing eggs when a newly mated Queen first comes into lay in a large colony until the size of the brood area has significanly increased and the brood pheromones kick in. You say there are no eggs
3. The Drones also give off pheromones which stimulate swarming, a colony with no drones will not swarm. You say there are a lot of Drones in the colony

Space is also an important factor in swarming and confinement because colder/wet weather will crowd the bees in the brood box and increase the chance of swarming. We have recently had colder wet weather

Supercedure cells are usually limited in number and tend to appear in the center of the brood nest rather than on the edges. They also tend to be later in the year. If you do still have a Queen in the colony and they are not supercedure cells  then the chances are they will swarm this weekend when the weather is forecast to get warm again.

There are no hard and fast rules as every colony is unique. Let us know what happens, I will post a tip for finding your Queen in a large colony.

Just as a follow-on to this one, a fortnight down the line and I'm now pretty certain that my hive is 'sans reine'. Additionally, the queen cells which I spotted last time have seemingly gone nowhere and the brood frames are now utterly devoid of eggs or larvae. The worker bees seem happy enough and they're still laying-down honey in the supers; however, I suspect that something's gone horribly wrong at the senior management level - any thoughts on what I should do next? Would sticking a frame with eggs from another hive work? Snapshot at https://bit.ly/30U7kmh. All advice welcomed. Thanks!

Upon further inspection I've found that one of the QCs has definitely hatched, so I'm assuming there's now a virgin queen somewhere in the brood chamber. Fingers crossed she heads off on a mating flight soon and I start seeing sign of laying in due course.