Review: 4.5 weeks ago, my brood pattern looked fine, but capped queen cells made it look like a supercedure was in progress.Then, at my next inspection, 10 days ago, there were no larvae and no capped brood. I looked carefully but did not see any eggs either, though I find eggs very hard to see. So I installed a new queen 9 days ago. But 5 days after her installation, there were larvae and capped brood! Either a hive-produced queen returned and started laying (at least 14 days ago to produce capped brood 9 days later) - OR the workers started laying. Which??? It's hard as a novice bee-keeper to distinguish.
Photos:
The hive has lots of honey - good news. But brood space is a little short. I did not see a queen when I inspected. I looked at about 1/3 of the frames on the top box. Maybe a thorough inspection to find a queen is in order in 2 weeks.
Good news - the bees were much calmer than at my last inspection. My smoke was better, so that helped, but they were definitely calmer bees. I wonder if that means they have a queen?
That is worker brood, so you have a laying mated queen. :) If it was laying worker it would result in drones you'd see very round bullet shaped caps instead of the slight bulge cap of the worker.
ReplyDeleteYEAHHH!!!! Thank you!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe numbers are dwindling so low now. I don't want to disturb them again and look, but the number of bees at the fly board is so small compared to the adjacent super healthy hive. I am so happy that there is good brood in the hive. The numbers should come up.
My next concern is the amount of space the queen has for laying as so much of the hive got filled with honey in the couple weeks without a queen and while the old queen was failing. Next inspection I'll figure out how much room they have.