Hi ,boy have I got a problem with the hive ,Drones are 80% very little workers and had to find any nursing bees, The queen is still there but I haven’t seen any eggs. It’s a bit like covid19 ghost town. Do I pick the queen out give her a few drawn out frames and the left over workers and nurses, in a Nuc and try to start again. I’m in S.E. Qld
How old is the queen do you think? If she is still sound as a layer there should be frames with brood in the middle of the brood frames even thou it is our so called Winter, it is more like a Summer climate in other parts of the world. I was down on the Gold Coast a couple of months ago and all the hives where really strong and swarming was an issue then. If your not seeing capped worker cells but seeing only capped drone cells then I would suspect you have a laying worker bee. Maybe what you have seen as a queen is a drone, a photo would be a help if you can get a photo of her. Normally a queen rite colony doesn’t have a laying worker, and in the cooler weather drone number should be down in numbers. If the queen is a poor layer it wouldn’t achieve anything in moving her. If you can get a frame of capped worker brood that can be a help.
Cheers
Thanks for the tip, she is not laying and if she has been the amount of Drones I had in the hive would’ve had them for dinner. All done and dusted today, she has one more chance she’s in a Nuc with all the luxury of a new home, and a queen excluder entry so no Drones can get in at the moment she has 14 days to get up and running,!!! Totally up to her now if she can come back from this ordeal, I got the nuc February this year, she has blue stamp.
Is she fat or skinny looking? 2020 queen possibly not mated or needs more loving (don’t we all 
) bloddy Covid-19 is effecting everything 
With a 2020 queen not laying she is a problem, two days ago I did a few inspections of my wooden hives and found 3 to 4 frames of brood. With the same climate and about 1C temperature difference I would expect the same in your hive if all was good.
I made a couple of phone calls to people on the Gold Coast last night and they told me their hives were going really well and producing an excess of honey. both said there was good orientation flight numbers of bees. Going on that information it isn’t a climate issue so I’m guessing the queen is a dud.
Cheers
Thanks Pete, Yeah I don’t think she was that strong when I got the Nuc, I won’t give up on her just yet, I’ve put her back in a Nuc with plenty of food and workers and nurses, just a couple of Drones and I’ll check on her in 14 days to see if she has taken up laying again. Fingers crossed, don’t want to see them die.
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What happened to the end of this story. Could you update us? 
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