The most serious queen problem you might have is to not have a queen in your hive.  This is a Queenless hive. A colony of bees will not last long without a queen.  Without an unbroken supply of young worker bees, the population in the hive will go down.  It will eventually die out.  If, when you inspect your hive you don’t see any brood, you should begin to think that maybe you don’t have a queen.  If there is no brood at all, the queen has been gone for at least 3 weeks.  You haven’t been checking your hives regularly.  It is always a good idea to look for eggs when you check your hives.  You may not always be able to find the queen. This is true especially in a strong hive.  If you see eggs then you can be quite sure the queen is there. 

If you don’t see any eggs and you don’t see the queen, then you should do something.  Check the frames carefully for ripe or capped queen cells.  Queen cells are peanut shaped and hang down from the frames.  If you find some, then you know your bees are solving the problem themselves. They are raising a new queen.  You just need to wait.  Check again in about 4 weeks. You should see eggs.

Sometimes if there is no queen in the hive, the bees will be restless and cross.  They may buzz loudly and fan their wings when you open the hive.

1. Give eggs:  If there are no eggs and no queen cells, the first thing you should try is to give the queenless hive a frame of eggs and young larva.  You will get this frame from another hive.  Take the frame of eggs from your best hive.  A queen raised from those eggs will be a good one.  (If you have been keeping good records you will know which hive is your best one). 

Gently brush the bees off of the frame and into their hive.  Do not brush hard or you will disturb the eggs and larva. You must do this before you shift the frame to the queenless hive.  You must not put bees from one hive into another one or they will fight.   

Put the frame of eggs and larva into the hive without a queen.  Mark the frame so you can find it again.  Put it in the middle of the brood box.  Check the frame after 2 or 3 days.  You should see queen cells started.  If the bees have not started to raise a queen, it could also be a sign that there is a queen but you have not seen her.  Maybe you have a virgin (un-mated) queen.  Look again.  If you cannot see the queen and you have no eggs or queen cells, you will need to try something else.

2. Unite with another hive: You could consider uniting this hive with another hive that has a queen.  This way the bees are not lost.  It will help to strengthen the other hive.  Take the lid off the hive with the queen.  Cover the top of the frames with a sheet of newspaper.  Remove the queenless hive from its base. Put the box from the queenless hive on top of the newspaper.  Put the lid from it on this box.  The bees from the top box will chew down through the newspaper. Then the queenless hive will accept the queen from the one on the bottom.

3. Introduce a new queen:  If you have any capped queen cells from another hive you could introduce this queen cell to the queenless hive. This could also be done with a caged queen that you have bought or raised.  See topic 13 for how to introduce a queen.