[Laurieston]

Bad news.  When I looked in my hives last weekend I discovered that two were broodless.  This was a real surprise as just 2 weeks previous to that there was good brood to be seen, in various stages of development.  The bees were surprisingly calm, so I wondered if maybe the Queen was not laying, but was there.  However, today I looked again and apart from good honey being collected, and some pollen too, there is no brood at all.  These two colonies are in Topbar hives, and just next to them are two colonies in polystyrene "segeberge" boxes.  These other two do still have brood.

I am wondering if I need to try to unite the two broodless colonies with the two queenright ones before it gets too cold to do anything.  Or might they overwinter, as they have only just (last week) stopped producing winter bees, and I can try to add a new queen in the spring - although I think that might be too far away...

Any ideas?

[cloddopper]

This time of the year it can often seem that a hive is without eggs as the queen almost stops laying from about 10 days ago till the 21 Dec equinox .  She is usually laying good & strong by Christmas day no matter how cold it is outside
 Get a big 4 inch diameter magnifying glass and have a better look with the sun behind you so it shines into the cells of the comb if there is no trace of eggs in any combs but the bees are not angry and the hive does not smell a bit like crushed nettles she may still be in there & OK .

 Have you closed up the hives to two or three single bee sized access holes ?
 

Have you noticed bees robbing the suspected hives ?  This is a good sign of them not being queen right for the raiders will be stealing honey from a dis organised defenseless hives to feed their own hive/nest ?

 If robbing is going on  you might as well as let it happen ,for you'll not easily be able to rescue the robbed hives at this time of the year , as frost is soon going to arrive according to this evenings weather forecast .

[Laurieston]

thank you for the hope you have given me. 

What has the smell of crushed nettles to do with it?  I am not very good with my nose, but my wife is, so I may ask her.

[cloddopper]

Over the years with 50 over wintering hives and up to 100 summer ones , plus 20 or so neus filled in summer  I began to notice that the smell of a hive was an indication of its health .

 That made sence to me ...  if fresh water, pollen  and nectar are coming in daily everything is usually OK . The hive smells of various flower scents and is something I liked .
Sick hives usually smelt of crushed green nettles or had a waxy smell like a dogs waxy or  mine infected ear .  Well that hown theyb smelt to me .

 Either sick smell meant problems .. queen less tended to be nettles for the first fortnight or so ,  after that when the hive was being robbed out and the bees inside had lost all hope it changed to the waxy dog ear smell .

 Come spring it was often quite noticeable that any hive that has a reduced bee space and a mouse guard fitted throughout winter that smelt musty when the lid was lifted was also going to be mouldy inside and full of either dead or dying bees who had starved to death as nine times out of ten there was not much capped honey in the hive .