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Noticed yesterday that I had fewer bees hanging around the entrance to my strongest hive. Decided to check it out today. What I found was a hive still strong with bees, but no capped brood, larvae, or eggs. The bees aren't any noiser than normal, so I think I still have a queen.

Does this mean I had a swarm. The old queen left and the new queen hasn't started laying yet or something else. Should I check my other hives, then move a frame with some brood to this hive, or just leave things alone. By the way, only saw 1 queen sack in the hive that wasn't opened.

I'm in the same boat on my weaker hive. I went through it frame by frame Sunday. I did not see the queen, any eggs, larva and very little of what may be capped brood. There was plenty of honey, capped and uncapped, a lot of open cells that appeared to be moist with some pollen in them, and one very small open queen cell. The hive is still tolerating a few drones. The bees do not seem to be behaving unusually and are still bringing in pollen.

I went on the Bee Source forum. Ours links to it from our home page link Beekeeping 101. Others are reporting the same thing and the advice varies. Some say the hive is probably queenless and you should re-queen. Some say there is probably a queen, virgin or otherwise that would kill any new queen, so don't waste time or money requeening, and others say if you have a frame from another hive with eggs brood and capped brood, place it in the troubled hive and give it a week or so to see if the bees are making new queen cells because they have new eggs to work with.

Unless I hear different from someone local with experience, I am probably just going to watch and wait on this one and hope for the best.

As of three weeks ago, I still had laying queens in both hives. Strong with bees, but I am not seeing any pollen coming in right now. I am curious about the bee population come fall, especially if this drought continues?

Do we not need new young bees to make a successful over-winter? If the queen backs off of the laying due to drought, will this not cause a population of older bees going into winter?

Curious to see some more input.

I always find it strange that on the forums I read that people have no pollen coming in. That appears to be the one constant that my son and I observe everyday with the bees. Big sacs of yellow and orange pollen. I do agree in a nectar dearth but my bees (9 hives) are still packing in the pollen. How many frames of pollen do your bees have in the hive??? At what amount will they take a pollen break????