No brood?

[Dr. B in Wisconsin]

Hello
This is my second year and I just inspected my hive, 2 deeps full of bees, 1 honey super quite a few bees there. Very hot today so I took a look and saw great activity, lots of pollen and honey starting to build up in the deeps but nothing in the super yet. I last inspected the deeps about 10 days ago and saw some capped brood, I guess that is my sign that the queen is laying. This time I looked at all the frames and did not see any capped brood, none. I always see some. Could this be a sign of a possible swarm? I plan on leaving things alone and maybe recheck in about 14 days?? Any thoughts would be helpful.
Thanks,
Brian

[BjornBee]

Some breeds do shut down. So it could be a brood break.

But......

If all your worker brood hatched out, that means no queen has laid an egg for at least 21 days. If by chance you have no queen, a laying worker colony will develop in about 10-12 days after the last brood hatches.

[MTWIBadger]

Brian,
I had the same situation several weeks ago with two second year hives full of bees.  I noticed one had a queen cell in the honey super and I did a full inspection.  I found a number of queen cells and no eggs.  I assumed the hive lost its queen.  Last week both hives swarmed and my wife was able to hive both swarms.  I believe the queen had stopped laying in preparation for a swarm.  I even put a frame with eggs in the hive thinking to capitalize on a queenless hive and make some queens cells for some 2-frame nucs, but the bees never made any more queen cells.  Now I have two hives with no brood and poor weather for mating flights. I'm going to wait another week and see if the new queen start laying, otherwise I'll put a frame with eggs in it.  Next time I see a hive busting at the seams in the spring, I am going to split it before it swarms. 

Luke

[schawee]

brian,the first thing i would do is look for the queen.if she is there,i would look at the two deep brood boxes to see if they are backfilling  the brood cells with nector,if thats the case, the queen will not have anyplace to lay.if so i would open up the brood by pulling some frames out and add empty frames in place of them.it would be better if you have drawnout frames but if not just frames will work.          ...schawee