Death of a queen

[Scotty]

I have come back from a weeks holiday to a hive with no queen. There are supercedure cells on the middle of two frames and larvae but no eggs. should I let nature take its course and allow the bees to do there thing or intervene with a new nucleus.
My preferred option would be let nature run its course, but have heard that the new queen may not be so productive.
Thanks.
Scotty.

[Jon]

How many cells are there? Make sure to leave only one or you will almost certainly lose a cast.
Supersedure is usually with just one or two cells and they are generally very pitted.

[Adam]

On three occasions this year I have thought a colony queenless only to find her a week or two later:-

Colony 1: No eggs, no queencells. Put in some grafts as assumed queenless. Queen started to lay as I took the sealed grafted queencells out! She then stopped and I removed her.
Colony 2. A 'few' queencells. Did a demaree with queen below, brood above the supers. All brood emerged, still no laying of the queen. She started to lay as soon as she went into a mini-nuc. They killed the replacement and susequently tried to replace the second replacement. Took her out; now a queencell in the hive.

This next one my fault...

Colony 3. Clipped queen tried to swarm and went back in (I saw her and cut out the queencells). Next week there were sealed queencells and I THOUGHT no sign of the queen. Cut out the queencells. Put a queen in a cage inside the hive. Clipped queen tried to swarm 2 days later (conveniently at the weekend so I saw the queen again) so the caged queen was removed. Eggs (upright) were seen when I took the caged queen out. So the queen has started to lay again.


The lesson is Scotty: She might be there!

As Jon writes, I would leave one queencell too. (Open queencell where you can see the larva in plenty of royal jelly. (Then you know the queencell is viable - with my third example, I left one open queencell. I examined the the two sealed ones and they were duff - one empty and one with a small bee inside).

Supercedure queens are well fed and so there is no reason to believe that she will be inferior. Some say they are the best. If you do find your queen in the hive, clipping its wing(s) will stop it flying and you losing 60% of your bees.