Hi,

I posted last Saturday about a wild bee colony that we moved out of a culvert pipe and now that the bees have been in the box for about a week I have a few questions. The original post is just a few posts down.

A few different people suggested to us that the hive we moved was preparing to swarm due to a lack of space in the culvert, and after a closer examination of the pictures and some online research we believe that we had some queen cells, that looked like peanut shells, on one of the combs. We had moved this comb into the brood box at the time, and this was also the comb that we saw a queen on when we were moving the hive. We opened the hive today, and the bees have been attaching the comb we put into the frames, and bringing pollen into the hive. When I pulled out the frame with the "queen cells" it appeared as though a bee had hatched out of it. We did not see a queen in the hive, but there were several large clumps of bees so she may have been under those bees.

We were told to look for eggs after 7 days, and we did not see any this morning, although it has not really been a full 7 days.

The second part of the story is that there was a clump of bees that we didn't get out of the culvert pipe. They are still in the culvert, and we smoked them today and they are building new comb.

Based on all this, my questions are

1. Do you think the bees would be in the brood box and building comb for a week if they did not have a queen?

2. If those were in fact queen cells that we saw, how long after one hatches would they start laying eggs?

3. Do you think the bees in the culvert also have a queen? Would they be building comb if they didn't have a queen?

We realize that this is kind of an experiment, but we have really enjoyed working with the bees this past week, and really appreciate how supportive other beekeepers are, and how ready to give advice they are. We would appreciate any suggestions or ideas you may have.

Thanks!