I am a newbie. I bought two established hives 7 weeks ago. They were both doing great for about a month. Then problems. I have one hive doing really well and another that all of a sudden wasn't. We thought maybe it swarmed? I was tasked by another bee keeper with going and looking for eggs. I didn't see any eggs but I saw plenty of larvae. I closed it back up. The top box was full and on Thursday there was increased activity and white wax on top of the bars. I added a super to be on the safe side. The activity dropped again. I went in today and working from the top down: the super is mostly ignored. The top hive box has six frames with lots of activity. However, the activity is intermittent. The other frames are mostly empty with some honey and no brood. The center 6 frames are only half full and not radiating out from the center. The brood is tight together but not centered. Its one one side of the hive and not the middle. There appears to be plenty of brood and on the bottom of one frame I found what looks like several aborted queen cells. Maybe they weren't? But it looks that way. Whatever they actually were they were torn open and the larvae exposed. The bottom box has one frame with an intact queen cell. The frames in this bottom box are almost 100% empty. There’s a lot of activity but it looks like the bees are cleaning up the old comb. There's no brood in the bottom. Just bees and some honey. Once again I didn't see any eggs just larvae. I didn't see a queen either but I may have missed her. I’m not sure where to go from here. The sister hive is thriving and has one full super with a second being worked on.
I made a video to show the aborted cells. http://vimeo.com/98482549
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