I inspected my hive today after are-queening a couple weeks ago. I spotted the queen and seems the hive has accepted her. What I am perplexed by is there’s no capped honey, not many capped brood cells, and I’m not seeing pollen cells either. I am a newbie, so maybe the cells really aren’t empty and I have an untrained eye?
Some additional info…I live in southern Oregon where it’s been extremely hot and dry and lots of fires. I did put in an internal feeder a couple weeks ago.
I see in the middle what looks to be a start of a queen cell. To the bottom left of that appears to be some white specs against the black backdrop of the plastic foundation - which could be eggs. The photo isn’t high enough in definition to confirm - it could simply be reflective lighting.
If you rolled or killed the queen last inspection, that queen cell would have likely been capped by now.
How do the other frames look? Why did you requeen? Did you terminate the other queen? The bee population looks sparse, did you shake bees off prior to taking that photo?
It takes about 8 days for a egg to hatch grow and cacoon and become capped… maybe your new queen is taking awhile to get going…
The other frames Pretty much look like the one shown here. Pretty sure it’s a reflection you see as I did not see any eggs. I requeened because I’m pretty sure I accidentally killed her during a mite wash. It had been several weeks without a Queen and the population was diminishing rather quickly.
What was the mite count? Sorry but I don’t have experience with dealing with mites, but it could give other beeks an understanding of the situation.
If the pest are overwhelming the hive, the colony could have absconded - requeening might not be effective therefore…
The mite count was only 1%
I would feed them a lot and quickly. They stores are extremely light or absent. You mention that it has been very hot so you may be in a nectar drought period.
I know you said that you have an internal feeder but there is no sign from the frames that they are taking this and storing it anywhere as they should be. Make sure your feeder is working, they should be wolfing down the syrup. This will mimic a honey flow for them and help to being the queen into lay.
I see you are in Oregon which I think gets very cold winters? It must be getting very late in the year now, If they dont stock up with stores very quickly they wont survive the winter.
*'m seeing the same as @JimM and not seeing any stores at all so you need to feed them like there is no tomorrow. That should be your priority for now. I guess there is a real dearth of nectar for the bees locally. Hopefully with you feeding them syrup they will build up in strength and stores to survive your Winter.
Cheers
