Hi Brian,

Thanks for reaching out with this question. We've seen capped brood in our campus colonies for a while now, so I agree that it's interesting to find several colonies without brood or with just eggs. I think your idea to check them again in a week or two makes sense. Here are a few possibilities to consider:

Queenless colonies: I've found a couple of colonies in late winter / early spring without a queen. In these colonies, I didn't see any signs of laying workers. Normally I'd say that you could give queenless colonies a frame with eggs from another colony to raise a queen, but I'd worry that these overwintered colonies wouldn't have enough young bees to successfully raise a new queen. In this situation, I'd be inclined to combine queenless colonies with queenright colonies.

Eggs not surviving: I've found colonies with queens that are laying but their eggs weren't surviving. I'm curious if the colony with just eggs is just getting started or if the eggs aren't surviving. I was also wondering if the eggs were from laying workers. I think checking in a week or two will answer these questions.

Genetics or other factors: There are some colonies that have genetics that are more responsive to the environment and slower to brood up. When checking colonies about a week ago, I noticed that some colonies had lots of sealed brood but a smaller amount of open brood, suggesting to me that queens were laying more when temps were warm than they were laying when temps had cooled down. It seems highly unusual to not find any brood or to just find eggs, but it may be worth checking in a few days as you suggested to see if anything has changed.

I'm curious to hear what you find, so please follow up after your next inspections!

Happy beekeeping!