[AChabot]

I did a cut out of a suspected queenless hive on March 15th, good population, decent stores, no brood or eggs whatsoever.

I waited a week before inspecting, they were bringing in pollen, had started to draw out some comb, but no brood, no queen that I could find, but some (I could only see these in the new comb) cells with multiple eggs.

Late last week there was still no sign of the queen but there was capped drone brood in worker cells. They had also built two queen cells.

Monday I transferred a frame of eggs, larva, and capped worker brood from a strong hive. Today I imspected, there are no queen cells started on the transferred frame of brood, but the queen cells on the old frame (the ones that were built prior to the introduction of the brood frame) have a good dose of royal jelly in them!

I looked for larva in there but between the angle and bees sticking their heads in every two seconds I couldn't tell if there was a larva in them.

My question is this: will bees stock a queen cup with royal jelly if there is no larva in it? Or is the presence of royal jelly an indication that they have started to raise a queen? What do y'all think?

 

[Stephenpbird]

In a couple of days the larva will be big enough to see (if there are any) and the bees should have extended the queen cups by then, so you will know for sure.

 

[Michael Bush]

You may see any number of situations if you look often enough. I would say the bees never fill a cup with royal jelly without a larva, but sometimes the larva is damaged and they have removed the larva but are still working on removing the royal jelly. I've seen this situation a few times.

 

[tandemrx]

Or it could be a drone egg in that "queen cell". Have had that happen often enough in a laying worker hive where eventually they seem to get desperate and make a queen cell that is just housing a drone. Seems they never get around to capping it - maybe they figure it out eventually and give up.

 

[Michael Bush]

Yes, they could have removed a drone larva recently...