[umchuck]

I purchased a nuc on may 14, then a 2 deep hive from the same apiary, so back ten days ago I noticed there were no eggs or larvae in the nuc, the other hive had plenty of sealed brood, with some capping's being darker and some with new wax, didn't bother looking for the queen, so I got on the phone and bought 2 queens, got them yesterday, so I was checking on the nuc to know if I was getting a laying worker, didn't happen, so re-queened, then went hive 2 to find the queen and install her in a nuc, well after looing at 20 frames of bees, honey and pollen, not 1 cell of capped brood, I couldn't get hold of the guy today, but I'm wondering if he might have put virgin queens in the hives, they got to my place, flew out to get mated, and never came back, prob no drones, I don't know of another bee keeper for at least 15 mi away, so please give your thoughts PS no swarm of queen cups in hive 2 ( no eggs ):scratch:

 

[Beeonefarms]

Sounds as if there were no young larvae to make a new queen. So they just chugged along till you rescued them with new mated queens...

 

[umchuck]

thanks, and it cost me just a pittance of one $100 bill to get the guy to mail them to me, he never did it before, so I made it worth his while, he was great on the phone when I had called him when I found the nuc had no queen, that was worth more than any $100 bill I've ever had.
I cant wait till I have enough experience to know the bees were just hanging out cause they didn't have anything to do, and I should have checked it when I found the nuc wasn't queenrite.

 

[drlonzo]

No matter what you always want to check a hive when you get it to make sure it is queenright unless it is being sold to you as a split with no queen, and in that case you should verify that it has eggs and young larva for them to make a queen with.