It was sunny and warm today so I suited up and lit the smoker to visit the langstroth hive. I haven't seen much activity compared to the top bar hive and felt a little worried about them. when I first opened the hive it the amount of bees seemed about the same as the last time we peeked in, definitely not more. About half of the syrup is gone from the feeder.
I pulled out every frame and looked at both sides pretty carefully, but there wasn't much to see. there was a lot of empty space, not much honey and no fresh pollen that I could see. I found 4 or 5 drone cells and saw one drone emerging. I opened 1 cell and before I could see more than a fat white shape the workers crowded around and blocked my view. I decided to leave well enough alone. I looked very carefully for worker brood or any sign of the queen but could not find any.
I know the last time we thought the queen might be dead/missing she was just slow to get going. Reviewing the blog shows that we found uncapped brood on April 21. It seems like a bad sign that a few drones would be there and one emerging without a much larger number of worker brood in evidence, -but I'm not experienced enough to know if that's significant or what.
I dont know what else to do but look in on them again in a few days to see if anything has changed.
If a new queen is needed, we might check out these people in tsawassen
http://www.urbanbeesupplies.ca/packaged%20bees%20and%20nucs.html
I will email them to see what they say.
