The buds are flower buds. And now and again a sempervivum will have a hen that flowers without producing chicks - not often, but it does happen. That's pretty much it for that plant, as they are monocarpic.

FWIW, I'd avoid that heavy bark mulch around these plants. They are far less inclined to produce offsets in that type of medium. Use a finer textured mulch or gravel.

Thank you, gardengal. For mulch, would pine straw be a better choice??? Thanks

Hens and chicks will grow much better without any mulch at all. The mulch holds moisture in the soil and HnC prefer much drier, well drained conditions. In fact if you moved them to a site with lean gravelly or sandy soil and full hot sun they will respond wonderfully by growing into much tighter, upright rosettes with lots of offsets. You can even plant them in practically no soil at all...just in a crack in a rock.

I don't have many of the good, old fashioned "house leeks" left in my garden. I loved the texture of HnCs but really disliked the tall, ugly "flowers" they produced and would promptly cut them off.
Then I discovered the whole world of named varities like "Lavender and Lace", "Pekinese", "Canada Kate", "Braunii"....I could go on and on! Did you know that there are over 500 varities of hens and chicks of all different colours, textures, sizes...? And so many of them actually have the cutest, most colourful daisylike flowers!

I find they do well when extremely crowded, raised for drainage if possible. I have a low, wide pot full, placed on a corner of the raised bed, full sun. I do absolutely nothing to them, yet they are reproducing constantly. The pot overflows with chicks and producing a number of flower stalks during the summer. I give away chicks on a regular basis, telling folks to just lay them on the dirt and ignore them. All have been good plants for their new families. My friend gave these hens to me years ago, keeps hers the same way in a raised bed. She usually plucks off a couple 5 gallon buckets of chicks each summer, gives them away to reduce the massive overcrowding of the raised bed. You can't even tell she picked them!

Neither of us mulch the beds or fertilize at all. My mother grows her hens alongside the roadway. Just dropped them on the gravel fill where nothing else would grow. Hens liked it and have done very well. They pretty much cover the area now, in spite of salt and snow plowing.