By July 17th, it had been 26 days since the hive swarmed. Doctor Hurst came over last week to see if the hive had generated a new queen – no luck. I decided to take another look, and if there were no eggs, I would order another queen. Here are some shots of the brood frames.
No eggs in this brood frame.
Lots of pollen, but no eggs.
The queen arrived five days later from an apiary in Georgia (two-day shipping requested, but it arrived in one day – nice job UPS). The office staff was amused by the package, but the UPS man seemed a bit nervous.
The packaged queen.
This queen is marked with a dark green dot. The bees (queen plus her retinue) looked quite frisky.
Arrow points to the marked queen.
I made a hole in the candy plug with a nail to facilitate release of the queen.
Queen cage ready for installation.
Here is the queen cage about to be inserted into the hive. As shown here, the cage was immediately surrounded by workers. Welcoming committee or lynch mob?
Lynch mob or welcoming committee?
I thought about taking one last look for a queen or eggs, but at this point, I figured I would just let the queens fight it out.