The newer colony purchased and installed in May was shown to be queen-less. There are no signs of the queen. No eggs or developing larva. All capped brood was interspersed widely distributed drone brood. A laying worker is present.
The wild colony which over-wintered was inspected. This colony shows immediate signs of swarming. I found tree different frames with swarm cells. The double deep brood box was split. The queen was moved with the half split to a new deep brood box to imitate a swarm. The original box was verified to have two frame with swarm cells.
The commercial purchased colony which was missing a queen was given a frame with capped queen cells.
In this instance we were able to turn a bad situation with only one viable colony into 3 viable colonies. An inspection will be performed in 2 weeks to verify that the queens have emerged.
