New bee hive question

[Idabooner]

There is very little brood and it appears to be  hatching. It takes 21 days from egg to hatch for worker bees, so it looks like you have not had a good Queen for 18-20 days.  Possibly a bad Queen or she got injured some way.  I don't think that swarm came from your hive, if it had you would have lots of capped brood.   If there is a new un-mated Queen in there it will be about 25-30 days before any new brood hatches.  If you buy a new Queen it will be 3 days to introduce her, and a day or two before she starts laying.   If you wind up with two Queens they will fight to death of one or both.
You could watch that Queen cell for awhile and hope it was started from a good larva and hatched a good Queen and that she come back from her mating flight.  All the indecision's   is what makes raising bees so much fun.  Good luck and keep us up to date.

[jackelope]

There is very little brood and it appears to be  hatching. It takes 21 days from egg to hatch for worker bees, so it looks like you have not had a good Queen for 18-20 days.  Possibly a bad Queen or she got injured some way.  I don't think that swarm came from your hive, if it had you would have lots of capped brood.   If there is a new un-mated Queen in there it will be about 25-30 days before any new brood hatches.  If you buy a new Queen it will be 3 days to introduce her, and a day or two before she starts laying.   If you wind up with two Queens they will fight to death of one or both.
You could watch that Queen cell for awhile and hope it was started from a good larva and hatched a good Queen and that she come back from her mating flight.  All the indecision's   is what makes raising bees so much fun.  Good luck and keep us up to date.

I think the decision is to leave it alone for a week and then recheck for new eggs and/or a new queen next week.

I've had a couple people think it was our bees that swarmed, and a couple others say it's not our bees. Not sure if we'll be able to tell unless we see our marked queen in the new hive that the beek that caught them has. We're not able to get over to his place till early next week but he said he'd hang on to them for us till then. We are thinking about starting a 2nd hive now after we've had a couple days to think about it.

Fingers crossed. If there was ever anything that reinforced whether or not I have A.D.D., this is it. All the info is mind blowing. The biggest problem I have is how similar everything looks. I need an owner's manual for these creatures!!