On a local bee list I read that a beginning beekeeper installed packages on foundation on two 
separate colonies. They then found that one colony was queen right with larva and eggs but the other 
had no queen. They also found a queen cell in the queenless colony.

My question is - do bees start queen cells if there are no eggs?

I have my doubts that there were no eggs, since there was no queen in the queen cage. However, 
someone told them that this was what happened, that the queen was dead before she started laying 
since they cold see no eggs (they did not tear down the queen cell and look).

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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