What to Do in a Queenless Hive

Updated October 2026. The queen is the most important member of your colony, and every colony needs one. Below, you'll learn how to tell if a colony is queenless, what to do about it, and how to judge the quality of your queen.

Signs your colony is queenless

A. The queen died in the last few days. You'll see several queen cells on the brood combs and no eggs in the worker cells. If the queen died only a day or two ago, there may still be a few eggs and young larvae. Check the colony again in 2-3 days for eggs and queen cells.

B. The queen died 6-10 days ago. There are no eggs and no open brood, only sealed brood, and you'll see several queen cells on the brood combs. Shake the bees off each brood comb so you can check every one.

• If you're not in a state with Africanized bees: keep the one or two largest queen cells and destroy the rest. The first queen to emerge will destroy the other queen cells and take her mating flights 7-10 days after emerging.
• If you're in a state with Africanized bees, like Arizona: shake the bees off all the brood frames, destroy all the queen cells, and introduce a new mated queen from a reliable queen breeder.

C. There's a new queen in the hive. There's no open brood, but some queen cells have already emerged, so there's a virgin or newly mated queen in the hive. If the colony population is small and some queen cells have been torn open from the side, the colony has most likely swarmed. Check the combs one by one and look for the virgin queen.

• If you're not in a state with Africanized bees: leave the queen in the hive, check the colony again in 7-10 days, and look for eggs.
• If you're in a state with Africanized bees: find the virgin or mated queen and cage her until you get a new mated European queen.

Requeen the colony or unite it with a queenright colony

Option 1: Buy a new queen

Buy a young, mated, good-quality European queen and requeen the colony. Queens can be hard to find in the fall. If you can't get one, but you have a small colony or a nuc with a queen, you can unite the two colonies instead.

Option 2: Unite the colonies

If the weak queenright colony has only 3-5 frames of bees, use the Apimaye division and uniting board:

1. Turn the round knobs on the uniting board to the ventilation setting, so bees can't pass through the holes but the colony odors can.
2. Put the uniting board in the Apimaye hive and move the frames of bees from the queenless colony to the other side.
3. Put the top feeder on and start feeding.
4. The colony odors will mix through the board. After 3-5 days, remove the uniting board. The bees will be used to each other and won't fight.

If the queenless colony has more than 6-7 frames of bees and the queenright colony is weaker, use the newspaper method:

1. Remove the top cover and feeders from the queenless colony.
2. Lay a sheet of newspaper on top of the brood box, and cut a few slits in it with a hive tool.
3. Put an empty super on top of the newspaper, and move the frames of bees from the queenright colony into it.
4. Put the top feeder on and feed sugar syrup. The slits let the colony odors through but not the bees. The bees will chew through the newspaper, and the colonies will join without fighting.
5. Remove the newspaper after 3-5 days and check for the queen and brood.

Both methods usually work well. Putting the weaker colony on top works better than the other way around.

Option 3: Let the bees raise a new queen

If you can't buy a queen, have no weak colony to unite with, and there's no young brood in the hive, move in a comb with eggs and young larvae from another colony. The bees will raise new queens from them.

This is slow, though. It takes about 12 days from a young larva for the new queen to emerge, another 10-12 days for her to mature and mate, and 3-4 days after mating before she lays. The colony will be queenless for about a month. In temperate or cold climates, that may be too late in the season for her to mate, and an unmated queen lays only unfertilized (drone) eggs. In the fall, it's better to buy a queen than to raise your own.

Still no queen cells?

If the bees don't raise queen cells on the brood comb you gave them, there may be a virgin queen in the hive. Check the colony again. If you still can't find the queen, wait another week and inspect again. If you see eggs in the cells, the queen has mated and started laying, and you'll find her on the brood combs soon. Mark your queen so she's easier to find next time.

If you don't see the queen but you do see several eggs in each cell, the colony has been queenless for a long time and some workers have started laying eggs. This is called a laying worker colony, and it's very hard to get it to accept a new queen. Laying worker colonies can't survive the winter, so it's better to move their honey combs into queenright colonies.

How to judge the quality of your queen

A colony won't grow if its queen is missing, old or poor quality, so check your colonies and evaluate the queens regularly. A queen's quality depends on her genetics, the genetics of the drones she mated with, her age and how well she was reared. For more about how queens live and work, see 40 facts about queen bees.

Check the colony's temperament

Before you open the hive, give it some smoke and wait 30 seconds to a minute. When you open it, watch the worker bees. If they're calm and gentle, your queen has good genetics.

If the bees are defensive, flying around you, bumping into your veil or suit, following you, or releasing alarm pheromone (it smells like bananas), the queen or the drones she mated with aren't European, or the colony is Africanized. Africanization is a major problem in southern states. The best fix is to requeen with a European queen mated with European drones. Even if a defensive colony is very productive, it can cause problems with your neighbors.

Strong defensive colonies are hard to requeen, so it's better to split the colony into parts of 4-5 frames of bees each and give each part a new European queen.

Gentle bees that aren't growing

1. Check for diseases and parasites. A colony with disease or parasites can't grow. See our guide to honey bee diseases and parasites.
2. Consider the queen's age. It's best to requeen every year or two. Younger queens lay more eggs and release more pheromones, and their colonies grow faster. If you're happy with your queen, keep her another year. Most queens stay productive for at least 2 years, but some are superseded within a few months or a year.
3. Consider the queen's quality. Younger queens are usually better, but if a queen's quality is poor, the colony needs to be requeened regardless of her age.

Signs of a good queen

1. A solid brood pattern. If the brood area is solid and nearly every available cell has brood, the queen is excellent. If there are many empty cells scattered in the brood, the queen may be old, there may be a disease problem, or the queen may be inbred. A solid brood comb is the best sign of a good queen.
   
   
2. Her size. Bigger queens usually lay more eggs than smaller ones. But very young queens are small when they start laying and get bigger later, so don't judge a queen by size alone. Look at the brood pattern first. If the queen is small and the brood pattern is poor, requeen the colony.
3. The age of the larva she was reared from. The younger the larva, the better the queen. Queens should be reared from larvae 1 day old or younger. Queens reared from older larvae weigh less, have a smaller spermatheca (sperm storage organ) that holds less sperm, and have smaller ovaries with fewer ovarioles. You can't see these without dissecting the queen, but in general, the larger the queen, the larger her spermatheca and ovaries.
4. How she was reared. Queen quality also depends on the strength of the cell builder colony where she was raised, the number of nurse bees, the nectar flow and nutrition, the season, and how many larvae were grafted into each cell builder.

In short, the brood pattern is the best sign of queen quality, as long as the colony has enough bees to judge her performance. Age matters too: requeen whenever the brood pattern is poor or the queen is more than 2 years old.

Once your new queen is laying, a queen excluder keeps her in the brood boxes so she doesn't lay eggs in your honey supers.