My questions
My thoughts
Just how big is this hive? How many boxes, how many frames of bees? How hard can it be to find a queen to confirm if there is one or not?
There can be any of a number of scenarios that arrived at this point. Which one is unclear, because of the introduction of a new queen in the process.
As best I can deduce from your description and the pictures, here is what I think.
- you have laying workers. Evidenced by the shear number of multiple eggs in the drone comb. A new queen figuring out her equipment may lay two eggs in a cell here and there. Definitely not many eggs per cell and certainly not all in the same area. (drone comb or not)
- the laying workers killed the new virgin(s) from the queen cells noted.
- the new queen was initially accepted by the straight bees around her and got to lay some eggs. As she moved on, she encountered laying worker(s) roaming on the same comb. Then the queen was killed.
- the laying workers are still there going at it.
- Do not waste any time and resources nor another queen on this hive. Even if they make queen cells from the comb given, they will kill those queens too.
Here is the suggested fix.
- First, go through the hive thoroughly looking for queens. Virgins or laying, doesn't matter. If you find one or more, cage them and put them in your pocket.
- Next goto your strongest hive, open it up and put a newspaper on top. Pickup this laying worker hive and put it on top. The strong hive will sort out this mess for you. Leave them alone for 10 days. Alternative is if this laying worker hive is a small colony, just shake it out in the middle of the bee yard and take all the equipment away. Do not put the hive back where it was. Force them to beg into the other hives, which will sort them all out. Use the bees to fix the bees ;)
- Next go to your second and third strongest hives to take some resources to make up nuc(s) for each of the caged queens in your pocket. Set out those nucs. Leave the nucs alone for 25 days.
- Come back later to see what you have in the nucs then rebuild the hive(s).
Done.
Hope that helps!