Q & A

Hi all, I'm new to beekeeping this year. I bought a large colony from a friend and split it into two colonies back in early June. I was confident the split worked, as I moved a frame with a queen cell, nurse bees, and a couple other frames with brood and honey and when I checked the hive in the following weeks, there were new eggs that had been laid. This was the case until I checked the hive yesterday after giving the bees space for about 2.5 weeks. I looked through all frames and saw no capped brood, larvae, or eggs (though I'm not always the best at spotting eggs). There were several queen cells that appeared empty. So I assumed something happened to the queen and went and got a new queen today.

This afternoon, as I was preparing to introduce the new queen I just picked up, I did one more check to make sure there really was no evidence of a queen. The lighting was a bit better today and I noticed that a few of the queen cells have very small larvae tucked way up inside of them. But I still was unable to see eggs, larvae, or capped brood on any of the frames in the hive.

My understanding is that when a hive loses a queen, the worker bees can lay unfertilized eggs. Since I don't see any other larvae in the hive, I'm wondering if it's possible these larve in the queen cells might be from eggs laid by worker bees as sort of a last ditch effort? Or is it possible there's still a queen in there? (I assume if the latter, she's probably pretty weak)

Given all this, I'm looking for advice about how to proceed! I'm thinking the hive either has a weak queen or no queen, and since I do have a mated queen on hand, the hive might be stronger if I introduce her. And I'm thinking I may want to consider destroying the queen cells that have larvae. Does this sound right to y'all? Or would you consider another approach? Thanks in advance!