1 Queen Found!

I went into both hives this afternoon...it was a lovely day...hot, sunny, and little wind.  I had my 3-year old helper who is fearless of bees.  I imagine once she is stung for the first time, that might change. 

So I went and suited up and got my smoker going.  Looked inside the hivetop feeder of hive 1 and found that it was pretty low.  That's a good sign, I guess.  Thankfully, I had a couple gallons still on hand.  I then removed the feeder and got a good luck at the tops of the frames.  Plenty of bees in there, that is for sure.

I then started removing frames starting from the outside.  The first couple really did not have much of anything going on.  But as I got closer to the center, there were many more bees on the foundations and I could see where they had drawn out quite a bit of comb.  With each frame I removed, the number of bees present increased dramatically...until the whole frame was pretty much covered top to bottom.  At this point, I was really hoping to see the queen.  But with all those bees and my untrained I, I lost hope.  Then I came to the green "drone" frame. 

It's cells are a bit larger than the others and so drones are normally raised there.  These are the useless males...they are also the ones targeted most frequently by the dreaded varroa mite.  By providing a full frame of drone brood, I can remove it before the drones hatch, throw them overnight in the freezer and kill off the mites that have infested the brood.  This is one natural way to control the number of mites in your hive.

Anyhow, when I got to the drone frame, I noticed some large oval shaped cups toward the top of the frame...looked like supercedure cells...which would indicate the hive is trying to replace a missing or unproductive queen.  I am not sure if this is a "good" sign or not.  I guess if a new queen hatches, then I will be all set with that hive...at least then I know I will have a queen!

At this point I closed this hive up, replacing all the frames carefully so as to try not to crush too many of "the girls".  I also added a pollen patty and shim to the hive...we'll see if they like the patties.

On to the second hive...same procedure.  This time, I pulled out the center frame and there she was...the queen!  Whoo hoo!  This made my day!  Let's see if you can spot her...

I was not able to see any eggs but perhaps it is early for that...after all, the bees were still drawing out foundation.  Perhaps if I knew what to look for and where, I might have found eggs.  I am sure in a week or so, they will be more easily seen. 

I had previously put a pollen patty in this hive...and the bees seemed to be enjoying it (see below).  It's syrup was also nearly gone.

In both hives, there were many drowned bees in the hive top feeders.  I read that putting a small dowel or piece of wood where the bees drink up the syrup can help them keep their footing and prevent drowning.  I made up some slivers and put those in...and cleaned out all the dead bees.  Hopefully that will help.