BUCKS COUNTY BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATION

Hi All-I just joined the group today!  Very new to beekeeping, as I installed my first package 6 weeks ago.  I haven't read up much on swarming, as I've been mainly focused on making sure that I'm doing the right things to keep my colony healthy.  

If bees have swarmed and there's no worker brood, I assume that the queen of this colony has either died or moved on.  Drone brood is present bc their incubation is several days longer than workers.  

Are there workers still present?  If so, the solution is to install a new queen.  If not, I guess you start over from scratch.  

I suspect this is mostly wrong, but you learn more when you're wrong than when you're right, yes?

Cheers,

Jay

My evaluation is that Kurt is correct. I say this because I see single eggs in cells in less than 3 weeks from swarming, and large patterns of drone brood. 
Had this started a few weeks later, I would have assumed laying workers.  I also saw a couple of recently built supersedure cups that were not charged,   
WHAT I DID:  I looked for the queen, with the intention of removing her to force a queen less situation. Too many bees and possibly a small queen made that impossible. 
I then removed all of the bees in the colony to a different location and left the box open with no frames.  The original colony was now empty. My expectation is that all bees will fly back to the hive, with the exception of the queen.  If I see no further evidence of fresh drone larvae, then I’m queeless and should have a chance at introducing one of my resource nucs into the colony. If I see fresh drone larvae, then I have laying workers and will remove the colony completely  Better. To cut my losses at that point.