Dear David,
 
if you have lost the queen, which sometimes can happen, you should find a lot of queen cells on the combs within 2-4 days. They are not at the lower outlying areas of the frames like swarm-cells but in the middle of the frames. This can be tested if the hive has a egg-laying queen before it possibly got lost.
 
If you want to test whether a hive has its queen and there are no eggs or larvas, you can make a so called (in Germany)  "queen-test". Take a frame with eggs or young larvas in its combs out of a hive that's o.k. and put this frame into the hive you want to test. If there is no queen the bees of the hive will try to produce their own queen and make queen cells.
 
Hope this was a little help. Bye for now.
 
Reimund
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Beekeeper in Germany (Bavaria)
Queen Rearing of Carniolan Bees
Insemination Station
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David Williams schrieb:
 
> Today i checked my hive after 2 weeks, I'm a new bee keeper.  I found that the bees are drawing out cells, but I couldn't find the queen.  I saw a few cells with honey, but I didn't look for eggs are really young larve.  I was looking for capped cells which I now know it is too early to see.  anyway, I'm afraid that my queen is lost.  I'll check again tomorrow for eggs, bur I'm afraid I lost her.  What do you think