Hi, I’m new at bee keeping, I purchased a package of bees just over a month ago. They have 4 frames partly drawn with comb. I have no brood at all and can’t locate the Queen. I have capped honey, nectar and I think drone cells and a queen cell. My bees are not aggressive towards me when I’m inspecting the hive. I am unable to locate the queen. What should I do.
No eggs? Do you have any pictures? It certainly does sound like a real possibility.
Do you have any source for a brood frame with eggs and brood in all stages (BIAS)?
Or if you’re a few weeks into queenlessness, you may be better off purchasing a mated queen. In addition to the fact that you’re in Africanized bee territory and shouldn’t be allowing the bees to raise their own queen.
Those look like drone-sized cells but I think that I see three eggs in one of those cells. Hard to tell but you might have laying workers… do you see eggs in random places or multiple eggs in a cell? Do you see bulging caps on worker sized cells?
You could still try introducing a frame of brood and eggs to see if they build emergency queen cells - if they don’t, then you have a queen or laying worker(s).
If you buy a queen and they are excited to set her and trying to feed her through the screen on the queen cage then you’re probably going to be ok by the time they release her. If they are attacking the cage and trying to sting, and hard to wipe the workers off the cage, then again, your queen is there or laying workers.
If you have a laying worker hive, you might be better shaking them all out at the edge of the yard and then seeing about introducing the new queen at that point or buying a new nuc and trying to combine it with your existing hive.