Lots of bees, nothing going on

[susanbeesf]

As I posted earlier, I was sure my bees were going to swarm.  I ended up putting brood frame, honey and extra supers in two nucs and left the original hive in place with the same.  Queen cells in all three but not seeing eggs in the two nucs.  Just seeing lots of bees, including drones, drawing out comb, in some instances with huge hexagonal cells.  At this point, I just don't know what's going on or what to do!  I have been laying low, thinking they would just sort it out themselves (that's why I haven't posted), but maybe they need some intervention.  Any thoughts?  Thanks!

[gmcharlie]

okay,   where did you leave the queen?   If I read that right you have queen cells in each of your nucs?  but your worried there are no eggs??   the queens have to hatch and mate before you will see new eggs,  which takes right around a month?  or did I misunderstand your post?

[BjornBee]

Susan, where are you from?

If you have queen cells, you may not see eggs until the new queen is mated. Of the three (Hive and two splits) you should see eggs in one, as one should have the queen. (unless you killed her, she swarmed, or just stopped laying.

[susanbeesf]

Thank you both for your responses.  I'll wait on the queen cells and I will go out and look more carefully to see if I can find the queen in the hive.  I just haven't been able to spot her, which is part of my problem.  There are a lot of young bees flying around the hive.I forgot to mention, though, that in the super on the hive, the bees are making strange vertical slabs of comb on the frames.  What does that mean?

[BjornBee]

Susan,
I'll assume that the supers have just foundation?    If so, the frames need to pushed very tight together when drawing comb. If you leave a space, they will do this. Once the comb is drawn, you can space out the frames to "take up" the 1/2 inch space that most boxes allow.

You might as well bite the bullet now and either swap out the bad frames or scrape off the bad comb. I would pull out the bad frames myself, and wait until you can place between two good drawn combs later in the season. Whatever you do, do it now! It will only get worse.

[susanbeesf]

Thanks -I took your advice and removed the bad comb.  Luckily there wasn't too much of it.  I looked and looked for eggs and the queen.  Didn't see any in either of the nucs or hive.  The hive, however, did have a lot of capped brood as well as a queen cell that I had overlooked earlier.  I''m in San Francisco and I guess I was thinking that the new queen(s) would have hatched earlier.  I think at this point, I should just let them all alone for a while.  I squished some bees putting the super over the hive and am feeling reallly rotten.  Shouldn't the bees just requeen themselves after a bit?  They seem to be bringing in a lot of pollen and nectar and are drinking the syrup I've given them so they don't seem really stressed.