Ah, ok. For some reason I had it in my mind that it was 3 weeks for the pheromones to wane, instead of 3 days. Now it makes more sense!
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My gut tells me, this is their house so let them carry on and do what they naturally do. I don’t feel right trying to intervene into their natural process by forcing a new purchased queen on them. That decision might be different if we were later into the seasons and running out of time to build the colony and food resources, and not still in Spring here. The upside is that this can serve as a natural brood break, which gives me the opportunity to do a mite treatment once the queen cells are capped, that wouldn’t have been effective had there been a bunch of capped brood. My nuc provider did not do any mite treatments prior to releasing the nuc to us purchasers, so although not a perfect start, I think this can still go in a positive direction.
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Hi Carol, sadly I have a couple of spanners to throw into the works. What I have found #1 is the failure rate of new queens. One of the first things I remember reading about bees is the failure rate of new queens, which is about 1 in 7 that fail, for whatever reason. I find this to be fairly accurate, & there’s nothing I can do to change the ratio.
#2 What I have found when doing splits is when letting the bees raise their own queen by natural selection, especially during swarm season, the colony will issue a swarm with the first virgin to emerge. What I do to combat this is break the colony into two by placing frames with queen cells in each split. That also increases the chance of getting a successfully mated queen.
For me, 4 frames covered in bees is enough bees for the colony to issue a swarm with the first virgin to emerge. By breaking the colonies down to 2 frames of bees, I don’t see any swarms.
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I really like your approach, Carol, and I share the same one. Jeff makes good points that I would say are not so spanner-like, but just natural and practical to bear in mind, so you have your Plan B, C etc ready. My apiary is the picture of what happens when you let colonies raise their own queen after splitting, and you leave more than one QC 
Right now I have several “extra” colonies from virgin swarms that issued after I did early splits on my two overwintered colonies, that are essentially the small splits Jeff would have made preemptively. I’m hoping they will all contain mated queens when I look in today 
Those that don’t end up queenright will either get a frame of brood from a stronger colony or be combined with one.
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@JeffH @Eva So much info…All those queen cells capped and not capped, splits, swarms, omg I am so confused and back to being completely overwhelmed…I just don’t know what to do now 
Are you saying I should take 2 frames of bees (one frame with a queen cell) add 8 new frames to fill the box with 10 frames, and move them in another brood box to start a new hive?
Then that would leave 2 frames of bees (one frame with a queen cell) plus add 2 new empty frames to make 10, and those remain in the original hive?
I’ve never done splits or dealt with all this so it’s getting really confusing and overwhelming. I surely didn’t expect to get into this situation when I first started my beekeeping journey. When I’m overwhelmed, it’s easier for me to take action if someone says, do this and tells me what steps to take, or it’s hard for me to follow. Sorry, I’m trying to understand what you all are saying the best I can.
Or rather than splitting the hive, should I just remove all the queen cells and buy a new queen from the same breeder? Would that be a better solution?
How do you know by looking, a mated queen from a virgin queen? Are you just looking for eggs to make that determination?
Several clues. If she is walking around regally, not running, she is probably mated. If she has “spider legs” splayed out, she is probably mated. If her abdomen is much wider and longer than all of the nurse bees, she is very likely mated. If she is backing her butt into an empty cell, she is very likely a mated queen. If she is surrounded by a “court” of nurse bees, head in towards her, she is very likely mated. Finally, if her thorax is hairless and shiny, she is very likely mated - mated queens get groomed so much, that they lose the chitin hairs on their thorax quite fast.
There are many other signs, as you point out, eggs and brood, and I am sure that others will come up with more, but that is what I use.
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Hi Carol, I’m sorry for overwhelming & confusing you. It’s time to sit back & take stock of where you are, while at the same time take into consideration the “timelines”. The first one being the 16 days it takes for queens to emerge. If you have a rough idea of when the last eggs were laid, then you can figure out when the queens will start to emerge. In doing so, you’ll work out how much time you have left to figure out a plan. The second timeline will be the time it takes for a queen to get mated & start laying eggs. I work on 12 days total.
When I split a split (which I have a video of), I don’t fill the boxes with frames. I only use the frames with bees & queen cells, plus one. I don’t remove queen cells from frames. I require queen cells to be on at least 2 frames, so that I can put one frame containing queen cells in each split. I reduce the entrance & place a hive mat over the frames, with something to support the mat on the empty side.
Here’s my video:
cheers
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Thank you Jeff! You don’t need to apologize. I appreciate you and all the helpful information you so kindly post. When there’s so much to consider within such a short window of time, I get flustered. That’s on me, not you :-).
Looking back at the dates, the only thing I really have to go by is on the May 13th, I first saw the capped emergency queen cell along with 2 uncapped ones beside it. I also saw several large, uncapped drone larva, so those drones were less than 10 days old.
My best assumption is the queen disappeared around May 7th or 8th and I’m also assuming, and it pains me to say, that I must have caused her demise because that’s when I did the first hive inspection after putting the nuc in the hive on April 29th . I feel sick about that. I never saw the queen when I put the nuc frames into the hive and I never saw the queen during that first inspection. There was a ton of bur comb and globs of thick honey on the nuc frames, so it was quite messy to work with therefore I was going very slowly and carefully trying not to smash any bees between the frames. I must have failed.
If that timing is close to accurate, assuming the queen cell was capped on April 13th, then the new queen would potentially emerge around May 21, and start laying between June 4 and 11th which is 2 to 3 weeks after emerging.
I’ve read the ebook, “There are queen cells in my hive - what should I do?” at least 5 times. What caught my eye/interest is where it states that queen cells produced for other than swarming, such as supersedure and emergency queen cells, will on no account result in the issue of a swarm. Supersedure and emergency queen cells do not usually require any intervention from the beekeeper - except to leave the bees well alone and let them get on with it. That’s from the book.
I guess that’s where part of my confusion comes from too. Do I leave them alone as I had originally planned to do, or do I really need to intervene?
Thanks again for everyone’s help - you all are very much appreciated!!
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Hi Carol, I have to say, based on personal experience that I disagree with the ebook.
It appears that you have 4 more days to decide what to do. Leaving them alone would be the easiest thing to do, however for me, I like the odds of getting a successfully mated queen when there’s double the chance.
Doing a split like in my video is as easy as placing a nuc into a brood box. If you watch my video a few times, you’ll get to see how easy it is.
I used to have the same theory as in the ebook, until one year no less than 6 swarms issued out of nucs with emergency queens, all in my backyard. I needed to put a stop to that, splitting the nucs down further solved the problem. I let my guard down last spring with a couple of nucs, resulting in swarms on both occasions.
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Don’t be too hard on yourself, Carol - what happened was either just an accident or for reasons only the bees know.
That’s correct, and looking back I see that my comments about my splits and swarm captures probably were confusing, as they do not pertain to your situation - I’m sorry! Good on you for such thorough reading & rechecking the booklet 
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Thanks Eva. I can’t let this stress me out to the point I don’t enjoy beekeeping any longer, so I’m going to observe, learn, and trust that the bees handle it successfully their natural way. As I learn more about splits, swarm control, etc., I’ll hopefully be ready to try another plan if in the future. Right now I’m facing a queen-less hive, plus that hive needs to have a mite treatment. As most of the brood has or is hatching, and once the queen cells are capped, that gives me a window to do an effective mite treatment. The nuc seller/breeder didn’t do any mite treatments, so this has also been on my mind.
By the way Eva, how did your inspection go? Did you find that you have a mated queen?
@JeffH I watched your video several times, as well as several other great videos on your channel. I see what you are doing and I’ll keep that video bookmarked for future reference. For now, I really need to sit back and lower my stress (and the bees) that’s built up over this first time nuc experience gone bad, and trust that the bees have got this and will make it right. Hopefully the bees will have a newly mated queen in a few weeks and the hive will begin to thrive again.
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I am sure your colony will straighten itself out, and if not there are always the options of getting a brood frame or two from another beekeeper or ordering a mated queen. The season is still young!
As for my inspection yesterday, I’m happy to report that all those swarm captures have mated queens 
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Hi Carol, thanks for watching my videos. My findings that differ from the advice in the ebook, could be because my bees are in an area where there is usually a strong swarm season, which keeps bees in swarm mode, even when they shouldn’t be. You may never experience what I’ve experienced, on account that you might be in an area that gets normal swarm behavior.
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Yay!! That’s great news!
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@Dawn_SD @JeffH @Eva good morning! So, today is May 21st, the day I estimated the emergency queen should emerge. I watched the hive entrance this morning in hopes of seeing a queen walk out to go on her mating flight, but what I saw instead was a bee dragging, what I “think” was a queen, out of the hive and tumbled to the ground with her. She was almost dead.
As you recall there were a couple sets of queen cells in the hive. One set was within the brood nest, definitely looked like emergency queen cells. The other set was at the bottom of the frame and looked like swarm cells. I attached the pictures again.
Anyway, the queen cell at the bottom of the frame was capped AFTER the emergency queen cell, so I’m thinking the queen (if that’s in fact a queen) that got attacked and tossed out is my emergency queen.
What are your thoughts? Does that look like a queen to you? And if so, what do I do now…just wait for the other queen at the lower part of the frame to emerge?
I attached pictures of the two sets of queen cells and pictures of the badly injured queen(?) alongside of a regular bee for comparison.
It definitely does look like a queen, and based on the size of the abdomen, probably a mated queen.
The recently emerged queens are slimmer and need a few days to mature in the hive before they orient and go on their mating flight(s).
The pictures make her look bigger than she actually is. She’s actually rather small for a queen and slender. I zoomed in with my phone camera when I took the pictures.
I said a fair bit on this topic already, however take another look at the video “City of Bees” & pay attention to the queen bees in the death struggle. Then do a comparison between those queens & yours.