Some checks yesterday - colonies haven't increased that much in the numbers of brood frames since Feb - or the few I have now inspected twice this year, anyway. There was a lull where the queen stopped laying, it seems, since those warm February days.
On Wednesday colonies had no liquid stores at all. Yesterday there was some and brood was well-fed too.
Feb 27th inspection in a 5 frame nuc. All fine. 2 decent frames of brood, queen seen, marked and clipped.
March 23rd inspection. No queen. No eggs and no larvae less than, say, 2 days old. 4 nearly complete emergency queencells.
So she just died then!
Very uncommon in my experience - you would usually see signs of drone brood, or her slowing down and signs of supercedure but not just disappearing.
On Wednesday colonies had no liquid stores at all. Yesterday there was some and brood was well-fed too.
Feb 27th inspection in a 5 frame nuc. All fine. 2 decent frames of brood, queen seen, marked and clipped.
March 23rd inspection. No queen. No eggs and no larvae less than, say, 2 days old. 4 nearly complete emergency queencells.
So she just died then!
Very uncommon in my experience - you would usually see signs of drone brood, or her slowing down and signs of supercedure but not just disappearing.
May your bees read the same books as you do.