So, we went into the hive today to look for eggs and larva, and to excise the emergency queen cell I had found. We looked at every frame multiple times, inside the hive body's nooks and crannies every time we moved a frame, and tried to find a queen corpse with a red dot.....or even one without.
There were a few bodies, but they were small, and some of the housekeeping bees took advantage of our opening the hive to dispose of the waste.
It didn't look like there were any new eggs, but the workers are tending *another* queen cell, that has a larva hatched and floating in jelly - they're building the cell up around her on the bottom of a frame (swarm queen location). None of the vacated cells from the previous swarm cell building have larvae or discernible eggs, though workers may have been prepping them for eggs (several workers had their heads inside two of them).
I looked everywhere for newly laid eggs, but most of the comb is filled with nectar and capped honey, with some pollen and some larvae that looked to be day three or four and older - there are capped drone cells. The bees are not touching the newer comb we had hoped they would use for brood. I moved that comb immediately beside the Langstroth brood frame, to make it more accessible to the bees tending the brood - there has been no addition of new comb (aside from adhering the existing frames to the sides of the hives).
I brought out the knife to cut the emergency cell off the brood comb, and found I could only score it down to the plastic base - there's no way I can 'scoop' this comb off without fatally pinching, ripping or otherwise damaging the queen inside - and she still might actually be needed. I made the call to leave the cell in for now. I will check daily to see if there is any sign of new brood being laid.
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