[bison]

I used the nice weather we’re having (high 60's) to check a few hives here in NorCal. Most are doing well with a few frames of brood and some drone comb. I’d noticed that one had a lot less activity at the entrance and when I open it up i found that it had several frames of bees but no brood. I saw the queen on a frame scurrying around and looking quite normal, and the hive appears otherwise to be fine (bringing in nectar and pollen, no signs of disease, etc). To bolster the population and in the hopes of kick-starting the queen I moved a frame of capped brood from another hive into it.

Should I conclude that the queen is a dud and re-queen, or is it too early for that? Given that the rest of my hives have plenty of brood it seems very unusual that this one is broodless.

 

[squarepeg]

since the others have brood this one is an outlier for sure. could be they are late starters or could be the queen is failed. i would have considered letting the added frame have some open brood and eggs on it. that way they could start a new queen if needed. if you are seeing drone brood in the others there's hope for a mating. we're a couple of months before that can happen here.