No eggs in brood nest late March NS

[Tommy]

Hey guys. I peeked in my hive today and there were no brood. I live in Porters Lk. There were a lot of bees. I e read the queen stars laying after the winter solstice, so I thought there should be some brood there, but there’s not.

Not sure how easily if be easy to get bees with the current shut down. Are my bees doomed or is there a chance the queen hasn’t started laying yet?

Many thanks.

[Bakersdozen]

Hi Tommy.  I don't know if I have the answer for you, but here are some situations I have experienced this year.
I had a colony, this year, that came out of winter that was similar to yours.  It is a few miles away and the only colony currently at this location.  I went ahead and reversed the brood boxes.  I thought I would put some 1:1 sugar syrup on to stimulate egg laying.  When I came back a week or so later, there was all kinds of brood and larvae in both brood boxes.  So, one could do a wait and see.
The trouble with the wait and see method, is you could get a laying worker in there and then they are almost impossible to requeen.

Do you have more than one hive or is this the only one?  If you have another, and you are sure that this colony is queenless, one option is to do a newspaper combine.   This year, I also had a very strong colony that went queenless right at the beginning of spring.  I did a newspaper combine with another colony.  When queens become available, I will split. 
Doing a newspaper combine is a preferable method of saving the bees. 

Not sure if you can get bees?  Do you mean queens or nucs or packages?  Down here, in the lower 48, beekeeping falls under agriculture and is an essential business.  Packages of bees are expected to arrive the first part of April.  Caged Queens will be arriving with them.  I don't know your weather conditions.  Perhaps that is a factor when it comes to manipulating bees.

[Jen]

Hello Tommy, here is another concideration.

1. Did you look for eggs? That is what I would do first. If you find no eggs on any frame, that is one story. But you might find several eggs in each cell, this is yet another story.

The queen won't lay eggs if she doesn't have enough nurse bees to cover the eggs, plus nurture the eggs along.

Do you have just one hive? and how many boxes high is it?

[LazyBkpr]

Late to the show here but good advice already. The queen may not lay much until there is a flow, adding syrup like Bakers mentioned would simulate the flow and get the queen laying...   i have one small hive right now that I was concerned about, I went through the five frames they were occupying and found the queen. I know she is there, so I put them back together and treated them with OA and put syrup on them. I do expect that the next time I open them that there will be a LOT of brood...