I live in central Nevada.  We bought two Italian packages this spring.  Due to constant rain and low temps, we have not been able to get in the hive for a couple weeks.

We discovered one hive has lost the queen.  No brood cells and no larvae showing.

We are trying to find a queen in the great basin/ mountain west that can be shipped ASAP.

I know it is late tonight, and we have tried a couple calls to no avail.  I am hoping I can come across something by tomorrow morning.

Thank you.

Take a frame of brood with eggs from the queenright  hive and add it to the queenless hive. That should prevent laying workers until you can get a mated Queen.

Couldn’t a queen be raised by the queenless hive if a frame of egg/young larvae is placed in there negating the need to buy a queen?

I don't know?

This is only our second year with bees.  Lost our previous hive this spring due to late start in the spring.

We looked for queen cells on the bottom of the weak hive, but did not see any.

Do we sit on it and see if they make their own?

I am sure we can find a queen (to purchase) at some point.

Provided you have ample bees in the area for the queen to be properly mated.

Yes they can. Unfortunately queens developed under emergency supersedure are considered inferior for a variety of reasons such as they are often developed from the oldest larvae chosen. Basically, she would not receive royal jelly for the same duration of time as a queen developed from the proper aged larvae. Even if one is chosen from the proper aged larvae, the first one to hatch is the oldest one and she will go around and kill her sisters.
You would be much better off purchasing a
Mated queen from a reputable breeder. You may also inquire about purchasing a queen cell. This is a great opportunity to improve the genetics in your hive.

Well, we talked to several people, and had a range of recommendations from combine the hive to do nothing.   If seems that every option had varying degrees of success depending on who we talked to.

We were also planning to move at least one hive to a nursery which is in a more feed rich area than where we live.

We decided to move both hives to that location.  We left the weak hive alone, and will see if it is able to raise it's own queen from what is left.

We will check on the hives in a couple weeks and see how they are doing.

Any updates yet on how your hive is doing?  Did they make a new queen?

Well, it has been about a month since we moved the hives to the nursery.

When we checked two weeks ago, it was apparent that the "healthy" hive lost its queen as well, and the smaller hive had some larvae.

This weekend we checked, and there has been significant growth to include larvae, brood, pollen and honey in both hives.

We took the feeder out of both hives, and added the empty frames back into both.

The original larger hive had two deep boxes when we placed them at the nursery, as it was doing well. The smaller hive only had one deep box. I am going to put a deep box on the smaller hive this week and probably a honey super on the bigger hive next week, depending on how it looks.

So, that is our beekeeping story for now.

Will update in a few weeks again.