Oh queen, oh my queen, where are you?

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.

New queen - installed 6/22/17

After 2 week break, I return to the hive and found that there was no brood, no eggs no nothing. I contacted The Beekeeper who gave me the first queen and on Thursday June 22nd I installed a summer Queen trapped in a push in cage on a frame of capped and open brood and eggs. That should help with the transition and in five to seven days I will take that cage off. I want to be sure that there is no Virgin Queen running around in the hive, or that there are no laying workers. When I check. I will double check to be sure that they're not still biting at the queen in the cage.

Newspaper merge, the WTF??!!

So, yesterday I was prepared to merge my laying worker hive with my strong hive using a layer of newspaper between the two. My plan was to then take the two honey supers and rob and merge to one with sufficient f ood for the upper box till they ate their way to meeging. 

All went well. Both colonies were quiet even tho' I did not smoke them heavily. I moved the new double decker over to straddle the old location then turned my attention to the honey supers.

I culled, sorted bushes off bees from all 5he frames. Then, putting in a mixture of blanks *with no drawn wax) and about 5 frames with nectar. 

During the culling I discovered this frame. Uneven wax, drone sized cells, larvae, two tiny queen cells in development. Look inside. Multiple eggs. Do I have laying workers in the super of the strong hive? WTF!

My two concerns: Is there a queen successfully laying in the main brood box? Perhaps, i mixed up the source of the frames. Second concern is the extreme heat. It's been in the 90s. I'm venting the top cover, let's hope it's enough.

No queen! Laying worker(s)

Just got back from taking the entire east hive apart. There is no queen. There was some drone larvae and so I broke the whole thing apart walked it across the field and only let bees that could fly go back into the hive.
Hopefully, whatever laying worker(s) had deposited those drones are gone. There were no queen cells. Nothing. Nada.
If I put in a new queen, and the laying workers are still there, they will kill her.
I'm thinking I'll merge this hive with my strong hive thru newspaper. Then, if the hive continues strong I'll split after the flow is over and I've extracted on the 4th of July.

New queen for the East

I was able to secure a queen on Monday morning. I took her out to the farm, took the honey super off, hung her cage with two attendants between one of the 10 frames, after I took one out to provide room. To help with acceptance I smeared a little bit of honey on the outside.
On the whole the hive was not particularly feisty yet I could not find any larva in it. Did that mean that there had been a young mated queen that just did not have a chance to start laying? Not sure.
I set the honey super in the shade and proceeded to check each frame to see if it would be worthy to be extracted.
I had had a queen excluder between the brood box and the honey super to ensure that no eggs were laid in the honey super. Some of the honey frames were capped some or not. I was able to take four frames pretty much totally capped back to the house. The remaining six had some nectar in them and a surprise.
Along the bottom of one of the frames in a very small area, a dozen cells with uncapped larvae curled in the bottom.
The hypothesis: not a laying worker, but a skinny mated Queen had managed to get through the excluder or at least get her rump to the excluder and was laying eggs in that bottom row.
Of course, none of this came to me until after I had left the farm. I had put that frame back into the super. The next day I returned for empty frames with plasti cell foundation for the super so they wouldn't start making burr comb.
I will go out on Friday to make sure the queen has been released.
Update: which idiot failed to remove cap on candy so workers could eat it open? Found her still trapped, released her, dropping cage once, should be OK. Will wait will one week go by to check -- May 18.

The good, and the not so good

So it's the first time I've been able to get in to the hives since the last post.
I've been concerned that the East hive, the one with the full honey super, has been queenless. And sure enough, it is although the ladies were quite calm.
When I was out earlier today, everything looked quiet and I was afraid that both of them could be queenless. But, as we know, you cannot judge a hive from the outside. I
I opened the east and found they were indeed queenless. The west hive, in the intervening hour from when I was first out here, had had a brood burst or a recent brood burst because you can see from the picture, there were an enormous number of bees taking orientation flights.
I took two frames, both relatively covered with capped brood, and a few open cells which I believe had eggs in them. I shook them off and transferred them to the east hive.
I hope that that will keep them strong enough until I can do two things.
1. I have to take the honey super off and extract it.
2. I have to find Queen.
I noticed that the frame of brood that I took had a lot of cap drone cells on it. Many of these were ripped open as I moved the frames from one hive to another.
So it goes. Both of the hives had relatively quiet temperaments so I believe that once I requeen the east hive, we will be cooking with gas.

One for one

I finally had time to open up both hives today. They've clearly been bringing in lots of nectar from the red clover. That's good. The West Hive had lots of capped brood. That Queen is very productive although the Beast seemed a little pissy.
The East type on the other hand which seem quieter in temperament, had no Queen. I've got to get one in there soon or the population will begin to dwindle. The frame of brood and eggs I had put in there a couple of weeks ago did not develop any Queen.
Saw no signs of mites in either box and populations were pretty decent. Both have honey supers to make sure any Queen has enough room to lay.
Need to test for mites soon.