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?
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?