Do you want the good or bad news?

The big bad Hurricane Dorian has come and gone here in North Florida. It was super mild here, we were lucky. My heart breaks for the Bahamians who have been affected. It's complete devastation on parts of Abaco Islands and nearly all of Grand Bahama Island. It's just heartbreaking.

But like I said, it was super mild here. Like super mild. We experienced breezes, some mild wind gusts, and light drizzly rain. That's pretty much it. Hubs had prepped the beehive with ratcheting straps to make sure it didn't get blown over from a gust of wind, and put some concrete blocks underneath to minimize any gusts that could blow up and into the hive. Better safe than sorry. We were not expecting winds stronger than 30 mph or so, so that was fine. And indeed, the hive made it through just fine because.. breezes and drizzling.

Anyway, it's dry and sunny today and I've been absolutely chomping at the bit to open 'er up and look for eggs. I've been feeling sick that my hive might be queenless, and hanging on the hope that I just didn't see the eggs last time I looked. But really, in my head, I knew there weren't any. Eggs aren't that hard to find and I've seen them on every inspection so far. On my last inspection on August 31, I didn't find any. Because there aren't any. But I really really wanted, no, needed to look again to be sure.

So first thing I did today was suit up and inspect. I didn't even do a thorough inspection. I only looked at a few frames and they told me all I needed to know.

The bad news: It is confirmed. 100%. Absolutely. No question. My hive is queenless.

How do I know with such certainty? There is a lot of honey. And there is not only no eggs, but also no larvae. No larvae to feed honey to so there is an abundance of honey/sugar syrup.

This is just one of the honey frames. There are several more that look like this.

The frame that had larvae is now all capped brood. Those larvae are developing and almost ready to emerge as adult worker bees. They are the last of my previous queens daughters.

Lots of bees, but underneath them is a nearly full frame of capped brood.

So yeah. My queen is 100% positively gone. Do I raise a flag or something? Send ravens? Play Taps? How does this work? I dunno. RIP my little queen. I am so so sorry for being a terrible beekeeper and probably squishing you.

But, I said I had good news too. I do. First, the population still looks good, so far. There are still a LOT of bees. But the really good news is... THEY'RE MAKING A QUEEN. Last week I told you that I was worried because their window to make a queen was very small, like 3 days. But they did it. These clever girls knew right away and got busy because... WE HAVE QUEEN CELLS.

I'm terribly sorry for the blurry photos. The bees are really unhappy with me, like they are all over at me at the moment, and I'm taking photos on my iPhone with thick beekeepers gloves on. Be happy that there are any pics at all. BUT, that long peanut looking thing in the above photo is a QUEEN CELL. There's another to the upper left of it. Aaannd more on the other side.

So, that's.. encouraging. There's still a lot that needs to happen before the hive is officially queenright again. Inside those queen cells, the new possible queens have to develop and emerge. Then the ones that are born will fight to the death. The victor will need to go on a mating flight, find some drones, and mate successfully, and then make it back to the hive safe and sound. And then she will need to be a good queen and lay fertilized eggs in a nice pattern like her predecessor did. And... I will have to not squish her.

I do want to mention that I'm not positive that I squished the queen. There is the possibility that the hive swarmed and the queen left with part of the colony to start a new hive elsewhere. But I think I would have noticed a drop in the population so I don't think that's it. But I'm a newbee, so what do I know.

All in all, I'm feeling okay about my hive right now. I mean, if anything else, this is all a learning experience, right? If I did squish the last queen, it was on 8/24, because that was the last time I opened the hive, and saw eggs. Queen bees take 16 days to develop and emerge, so a new queen should emerge sometime next week. I'm leaving on Saturday for a week long cruise. By the time I get home, the queens will have emerged, fought, and the winner hopefully mated, or shortly thereafter. But I will wait at least another week or two before I open the hive again. I should be able to get an idea if they're queenright just by observing their behavior from outside the hive. They've been really pissy lately, and as they're coming and going from the hive, they're not as ... I dunno ... organized. I know how they used to look and that's not how they've looked lately (but that could just be the weather), so if I see them looking more like they've got their stuff in order, if they're more gentle and not all super eager to get all up in my face, I'll have a pretty good feeling that they have a new queen.

But I won't know until I see eggs again. Wish them luck. And please please wish me luck to never ever squish a queen bee again. Like EVER. ☹️

Good luck girls!

🐝