No brood!

[mtbe]

I have 3 top bar hives. 

I was out of country for a few weeks.

Neighbors let me know they swarmed while I was away.

Last weekend, I opened one hive and saw brood and found the queen.

Just checked on them this afternoon. 

Every bar in all three hives is full of honey.  No brood.  I did not spend time looking for the queens.

I added a few bars in each of the brood area today.

Do I need to more thoroughly look for queens?

Do I need to remove the comb that has honey in it in the brood section and replace with empty bars?

Any idea what is going on and what I need to do? 

[luvin honey]

Could the new queens not have hatched yet? Or maybe hatched but not mated? Or maybe mated but not laying yet? Just a couple ideas from a newb.

[ChristyHemenway]

I have 3 top bar hives. 

I was out of country for a few weeks.

Neighbors let me know they swarmed while I was away.

Last weekend, I opened one hive and saw brood and found the queen.

Just checked on them this afternoon. 

Every bar in all three hives is full of honey.  No brood.  I did not spend time looking for the queens.

I added a few bars in each of the brood area today.

Do I need to more thoroughly look for queens?

Do I need to remove the comb that has honey in it in the brood section and replace with empty bars?

Any idea what is going on and what I need to do? 

Hello, mtbe --  Not enough information!

You don't say how many bars total of comb are in your hives, or for how long they have been hived.
You didn't mention whether you saw the remains of queen cells.  If they swarmed, there had to have been brood or they could not have made a queen.  Perhaps they absconded, but that would mean no (or very few) bees in the hive.

It would be a bit unusual if all three of your hives had swarmed, I would think?
I would not remove anything that they have built, but there are a million question that could matter in conjunction with an answer - and if you had pix, those would be great too...
Feel free to email direct... christy@goldstarhoneybees.com


 -- Christy

[mtbe]

I started last year, so this is my first Spring, coming out of winter.  I had 3 hives going into Winter, but lost 1. 

So, I had 2 hives that looked good.  Before I left the country for a few weeks, I did capture a swarm and placed in another box.  So that left me  with 3 hives.  I did not check for a queen.

In all three hives, the number of bars with comb are between 18 - 24 (on 4ft hives), and I think 28-30 bars can fit in each.

In the two that made it over winter, I found lot's of queen cells.  About 5 in one, and 3-4 in the other.  By the time I got to them, they were all open.

The hives are VERY active.  Lot's of bees.  And again, comb and cells full of honey.  No brood.  No empty cells (or very few) in all three hives.  I only fed once, late Winter, with a boardman feeder.  They didn't take it very quickly, so I assumed they were doing fine on their own.

[Wyvern]

I have a hive that ended up without brood yesterday (checked it a week and a half ago and had brood and an opened supersedure cell) I am worried too!

[caticind]

Either you have a queen that's not laying yet or you are queenless.  Start by adding more empty bars.  Consider harvesting some of that honey for yourself or freezing it for the bees, in order to have some more space for brood.

How long since the hives are said to have swarmed?

If less than a month, give them some empty bars and be patient - they will build brood comb or eat some of that backfilled honey and make room for brood.  Just like Wyvern, from the day of an open queen cell until the appearance of the first eggs can be more than three weeks.  There will be a broodless period, and that's ok as long as they have space.

Now, I'm just asking this question to be sure we don't miss the obvious:  You are not feeding any of these hives, right?