Before I left on my trip (starting July 10) I did make sure that both hives had buckets of syrup and extra space. I did not see the hybrid queen so I started to worry.
I returned home on July 22 (delayed from the 21st) and did a quick check of syrup buckets. The bucket for the hybrid queen is still mostly full. The bucket for the Italian queen is empty. I put my ear to each of the hive boxes to see if I could ascertain how the bees are doing in a general way. The hive with the Italian queen sounds much bigger than the hybrid queen's hive so I continued to worry about that hive.
It poured on the 23rd so I did not do anything with either hive.
Today I checked on the hybrid queen's hive. I pulled all the boxes off to take a quick look at the screened bottom board--just to see if there were lots of dead bees or anything else odd looking--and there was the queen! I'm guessing that during my previous inspections she scurried for the darkest part of the hive under the bottom box and that's why I was unable to see her. The bees are working on one side of the bottom box and the frames on the opposite end are empty. The next time I go in I may try moving all of the brood frames to the middle and putting some of the empty frames on the outside to see if the bees will fill the bottom box more evenly. They have 3 or 4 frames of capped brood in the bottom box, and the queen is starting to lay eggs in the second box on a couple of frames. The second box still has plenty of space so I'm pulling off the third box since it just adds distance between the bees and the syrup bucket. Anyhow this hive is several weeks behind the Italian queen's hive, but I guess that's to be expected given she was starting later with fewer workers and too many drones.
I got stung on my toe walking through the clover on the way to the hives:) One of the hazards of wearing sandals. No stings while doing the inspection.
I'll check on the Italian queen's hive tomorrow--weather permitting.
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