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I inspected my hives this morning 11 September) and found one of them to be queenless. I did notice 5 queen cells and some of them were capped and the others were not. My guess is that the ones that are capped were capped in the last day or so. I inspected the same hive last week and did not see any queen cells but did notice all stages of brood. I say that it is queenless because there are only capped brood and ready to be capped brood any day now. My question is - Is it too late in the year to have a queenless hive? Should I let the process work itself out or should I try to find a queen to purchase and install her after removing the queen cells?

From my calculations (best case scenario), the new queen should emerge no later than 19 September, do a mating run around 23 September and the earliest that I should expect to see eggs is around 28 September. Add three weeks on that, and that would be the 3rd week in October before new bees emerge.

I could also merge the hive with another hive if that is the best option but I would want to do that before the queens emerge.

I could also supplement frames with brood from stronger hives to keep the population up while the process works out.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Jeff