Queenless or autumn?

Beekeeping - Basics Wintering your Flow Hive
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So I did a check today,
It’s been 3 weeks since I emptied all my bees down to the super as queenie had been laying in the flow frames
(Whole hive had toppled in wind and in putting back up I didn’t think about the position of the queen vs the excluder)

So in Todays inspection I had next-to-no honey stores capped up top. Some nectar by the look.
No sign of the brood - all hatched and cleaned up.

Nothing in the super (I put on last year to leave stores for a cold winter. Expected them to bring honey down… They barely touched it and it was a mild winter)

Now my top flow - basically frames all empty Super - hexed up but empty.
Brood box. Empty. A couple of queen cells, that might have been hatched. These may be hang overs from when queenie was up top, or not.
The hatched cells do look pretty old.

Is it likely just Queen taking an autumn break? (No brood, no eggs, nothing capped)
Dead Queen?

Where the heck would I get a new loved up Queen in central west nsw at the start of autumn.

Could I maybe add some frames of brood?
Or do I let this lot sort themselves out till spring, see what’s left/happened. Requiem from a new Nuc?

I don’t have a local mentor at this point so hope I might hear some qualified advice here
Or get pointed towards some good vids (instead of just diving in to random YouTube’s from all over the world)

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Hi & welcome to the forum Brendo.

I think it’s highly unlikely that your queen is having a break during autumn. A colony needs to continually replace bees that only live for about 6 or 7 weeks, unless the colony raises what I believe to be “fat bees” that will last the whole winter, as in North America - for example. I doubt if weather in Orange during early autumn would compare to that type of weather.

I would seek out a local bee club, to find out if someone can sell you a frame of brood that contains worker eggs. I would avoid a mated queen at this stage, on account that she could get rejected. You might need to have a few goes at the colony making a new queen. Therefore you should organize some followup frames of brood, in case you need them.

I would remove supers that the bees don’t occupy. It’s easier to manage one brood box, if that’s all the bees occupy, when doing regular checks to see if a colony is building queen cells, etc.

Seeing as you have a flow hive, why don’t you check out some of the videos that Flow put on Youtube?

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