a John Caldeira snip.... 
A local beekeeper presented photos of unusual looking sealed brood that I'd never seen before.

my comments and questions...
photos help but normally only answer some questions.  so to the questions first..

1) is the brood in the photo from the original queen or from the one produced in the walk away split?

2) how isolated is this hive from other hives or other beekeepers?

3) do you see any signs of brood disease?

4) does the picture represent the approximate population and age of the adult (emerged) bees in this hive/split?

as a casual observation the bees in the picture look old and from what I can see there is not too many of them.  if there is no sign of brood disease then the first thing I would think about the population of adults and their age demographics.  basically it takes a lot of very young bees to create bees wax and without these the task of capping would be a challenge.

secondly the pattern looks like it is tending toward being disorganized and leaning towards being 'buckshot' which would be somewhat reasonable if the pattern was laid down by an older queen.

excellent question John and it would be most interesting to see if the problem resolves itself or not.

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