Jon

We have a group which meets on Thursday evening at the association apiary for general beekeeping stuff rather than queen rearing.
It pretty much just apiary management stuff - whatever needs to be done that week.
last Thursday I marked and clipped a couple of queens and in the next box to check there was plenty of sealed brood but no larvae or eggs, no queen and about 8 queen cells.
First thought was a swarm but this colony was still building up.
It was a colony which had been bought in and it had been transferred to a new box 10 days before.
So perhaps the queen had a mishap during the transfer of maybe just died as I have seen a couple of colonies lose their queen for no apparent reason this season.
Either way, we reduced to the best of a poor bunch of queen cells.
Having slept on it, I had a better idea so next day I grafted a frame of larvae from one of the best colonies we have which is headed by a good queen.
I squashed the queen cell we had left and introduced the frame.
Checking this morning there are at least a dozen cells started so that will give us some options re. requeening poor performing colonies in another week or so.