The current configuration is two deep brood boxes and one medium honey super.
When I installed the new queen in the push-in cage, I made sure that there was a queen excluder between each level. I reduce the number of frames to 9.
I came out today Friday, June 30th to see if she was in the cage or had been released. The other bees had chewed the wax under the cage and released her. At this point there should have been no sign of drone brood or of laying workers in any of the three boxes, and there wasn't.
I took the honey super off, which felt a little bit lighter, that's probably because of the hellacious amount of rain that we've had. I made sure there was no one laying in the honey super.
I took the middle box, the top deep brood box and went through it starting in the middle. On the second frame I found some queen cells. One was capped. So that means the queen that was in there had to have laid these. I closed that part up and went to the bottom box below the second Queen excluder to make sure there were no laying workers. I did not find any sign.
Overall, the temperament of the hive is quiet, not aggressive which leads me to believe that they feel queen right. I did not see evidence of small hive beetles, even in the screen tray below the screen bottom board which I have filled with agricultural lime.
My decision, since one of the queen cells was already capped, is to leave this Hive alone for another week. I will check this the weekend of July 8th and see what the status is.
Since it takes 11 days at least for a queen to emerge, one of the cells should be open. I'll look and see if there are others. If the rain slacks off, one of them should get made it , even if she is a weak queen, that may save this Hive which still has a good number of workers.
I'm thinking that the cell won't open for another 4-6 days. After that time it is anywhere from 8 days to 14 days until she is able to begin laying. Once she begins laying, it will be another 24 days until the first bees emerge so let's do the calculation.
If the queen cell was laid on June 27th, five days after the new Queen was installed, she should have emerged on day 16 about the 13th of July. Add two weeks for her to become mature and mated, that puts it August 1st. And then somewhere around August 24th or the end of August, the newbies will emerge.
Either this Hive will make it or not. I may ask a friend for queen cells and split these hives up -- it's a long time to go queenless. And now it will be nearly two months until the population is on the rise again. Hard year this year.
