New queen?

[Mountaineerfan]

Ok, I'm not sure what exactly is going on in my hive, but I thought I would post my observations here to see what the experts thought.
I am coming through my first winter with bees. I lost one hive due to starvation, but this hive has done well all year so far. Yesterday the temps here in Atlanta hit 64F, so I went to apply first dose of Terra-pro and put in some Apistan strips. There were lots of bees and they seemed loud. I noticed on one of the frames in the super what looked like queen cells that were either open or half finished, about half way up the frame.
When I got into the brood chamber, I noticed a few more queen cells, and on about the 5th frame I found a queen, but since my queens are not marked, I don't know if this is my original or not. She seemed very skinny, and wasn't laying. In fact, I didn't see any eggs in any of the first five frames in the deep, and saw a couple of cells of capped brood, and some that looked like they were dead in the cells.
I didn't get much farther into the hive because at that moment my son decided he had to go potty and couldn't hold it, so I put the deep back together and applied the Terramycin and apistan strips and reassembled the hive.
So my question is: Could this be a virgin queen I saw, and if so, are there any drones about? What should I be looking for? There seemed to be a large amount of bees, is it too early for swarming?
It has been cold (for Atlanta) lately, so I wouldn't think they would be swarming yet, though I admit that I really don't know.
What do y'all think? If you need more info, let me know and I'll try to reply as detailed as I can.
thanks! I love this site!
Steve

[Joel]

{see what the experts thought.}

You are on the wrong post, check Bee-L, that's where the experts are!

The number of queen cells sounds like swarming but the lack of capped brood says likely not. I would suspect you are dealing with a supercedure. Either the skinny queen you have is failing and cells are being built or she is the new queen either not mated yet or recently mated and not laying yet. Either way I would keep a close eye on her throughout the spring and summer as queens bred this early and in poor weather often are not mated well and are either poor producers or may peter out quickly as the season progresses. Make certain you give them every advanatage. These old bees will have reduced ability to produce royal jelly, espcially without any influx of hatching workers. This may effect queen quality and brood rearing ability.

[Mountaineerfan]

Thanks Joel! I went out today to do another terra-pro treatment. I didn't try looking for the queen because they were still clustered even with temps around 55F. I just took off the super, added the terra-pro, and put it back together. They did seem calmer. I need to do a mite count soon, as I saw quite a few on the bees in the super.