There were a few hives that had no queen. No indication of eggs or young larvae. Some had agitated bees. The action taken was to find a frame with lots of day old standing eggs and place it in the queenless hive. The bees in the queenless hive likely know how that they are queenless and will set about making a new queen. It will take about a month for a mated queen to be laying eggs in the hive. So the plan is to stay out during that time. With this approach, it’s important to consider if there are enough drones flying around to mate with the virgin queen. This time of year seems like it might getting late for this operation due to quantity of drones.
We also found a frame with a queen cell on it. Gently moving this frame to the queenless hive can also address a queenless situation.
If a worker has started laying drones, it may be necessary to shake the bees out so the laying worker can’t fly back or use a queen phermone strip to make the worker bees think a queen is there and no need to lay eggs or just put the new eggs or queen cell in and let the bees do their thing.
