Queen is not laying - What should I do?

My hive swarmed with the package queen I received in April of this year. I made frequent inspections since then, found that my hive was queenright due to one of the swarm cells hatching. I found this queen 2 weeks ago. I then removed the rest of the swarm cells and closed it up.

Upon inspection today, I found my queen again but there are no eggs, larva, and most of the previous capped brood has hatched! What should I do? I ordered another queen to be safe but she will not arrive for another 7 days. Any advice here is welcome.

Thanks
Joe

http://www.bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm

What is the timeline of finding your hive to be queenright? I ask because as @Michael_Bush has already chimed in, his resources on bee math should also tell you whether or not you should be concerned. His resource of bee math is what helped me decide that all was well in my hive after installing a severely distressed nuc.

Check out the links, then do some counting… You may or may not decide that your hive is in good (or bad) shape.

Thank you both so much for replying. I have a single hive this year so I don’t have any other hives to provide fresh brood/eggs to the hive in question. I found the hive to be queenright 10 days ago. I am not sure when she emerged to be exact. Maybe 14-16 days ago. So according to the bee math (if I am understanding it correct), I should be seeing eggs soon if in fact she is not a virgin queen?

Correct. You just have to wait it out a bit.

Many a queen is murdered at the hands of an impatient beekeeper lol

MYSELF INCLUDED! when I was new.

If a queen is accidentally killed, they will start with a 4 day old (from the egg) and in 12 days they will have a virgin queen. It usually takes two more weeks to get her mated and laying enough that you see eggs and maybe some open brood. That’s 26 days from when they went queenless. Sometimes it takes an extra week. That’s 33 days. After that it’s hopeless since if she mates after that she will be a drone layer.

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G’day Joe, if you have a queen coming in 7 days time, it would be a good idea to check again for eggs before adding the new queen. If you find that the queen is laying in 7 days time, you might be able to split the colony to make use of the new queen.

Hey Joe (love that song),

I’m guessing that the queen you found a couple of weeks ago is a different queen to the more recent find. This is because you mention destroying swarm cells… which is prob what the Q you saw would have done if she was likely to stay that long.

Patience is the name of the game. Don’t put the new queen in is my advice. She will probably just get demo’d by the hidden virgin (who may be big, strong and mated by the time the bought Q gets out!)