Update to yesterday's post:

Aaaannnd it's raining. And even if it clears up later, the bees are still going to be grumpy so I will not be looking for eggs today. And probably not for several days.

Hurricane Dorian is expected to arrive off the coast of North Florida on Wednesday. I'm not particularly worried about the storm, so long as it stays on it's current forecasted track. Crossing fingers, toes, and everything! It's going to skirt the coast and head north/northeast. We're expecting wind gusts of 50+ mph, and lots and lots of rain. Rain is not bee-friendly weather. I'm not bugging the bugs during that time.

I might have a window on Thursday or Friday to take a peek and if I do, I'll report back. The alternate plan is to leave them alone until I get back from vacation in two weeks. At that point I'll decide what I need to do, if anything.

If the hive is really queenless, my options are to wait and hope, or order a new queen and put her in there ASAFP. Ordering a new queen is the quickest and most guaranteed option, so I might just do that because I'm a noob, and I don't like this feeling of not knowing, and I really don't want to go through all the waiting for my hive to make their own queen right now.

I mentioned yesterday that that's not 100% guaranteed anyway. There is a short window of time for the workers to go "oh hey, we need a new queen like RIGHT NOW" and get on with it, and that might have already passed. I'll try to sum this up...

The queen is the only bee laying eggs. Those eggs are fed royal jelly for 3 days, when it hatches into a larva the workers switch them to pollen/honey, and it begins to develop into a worker bee. When the colony realizes they need a new queen, a few eggs are selected and they are ONLY ever fed royal jelly. Those larvae develop into queens. But there is only a 3 day window for them to get the memo about making a new queen. If they wait too long, the window is closed. And if the queen is gone, there are no more eggs. Not until some worker bees start laying eggs. They can make a queen at that point, but in the mean time, the colony is getting smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker, every day. Bees die every day. If there are no more eggs to develop and replace them, the colony shrinks.

Also, even if they DO manage to make a new queen, she'll be a virgin until she leaves the hive to mate. And then hopefully she finds some drones to mate with. And hopefully she mates successfully. And hopefully she makes it back to the hive safe and sound without becoming a bird's lunch. There's a whole lot of hoping in there. Hmmmph.

All of this has got me thinking that maybe I should go ahead and start a second hive. I was going to do that in the spring, but now I don't know if I want to wait. Two hives are better than one, because IF I had a second hive right now, I could take a frame containing new eggs from that hive and put it in the queenless hive, and they'd get to work making their new queen and I'd have another hive so I wouldn't be so stressed. But I don't, so I can't, and I'm in this predicament, or maybe not predicament because I just didn't see the eggs yesterday and everything is actually really fine.

BUT I DON'T KNOW and won't know because RAIN. This stupid dumb rain. *long dramatic sigh*

BTW, if you're wondering, I will be doing a little hurricane prep on the hive. No, I'm not moving the hive into the house. I asked hubs if I could, and he said yes, they can come sleep in the bedroom with us and there's plenty of room on the bed, but he hoped they wouldn't steal the covers, but ultimately we decided against that. They already have a house. It's sitting on cinderblocks, so it's up off the ground and not in danger of flooding, unless something catastrophic happens. I'll put some tie down straps around it to secure it all together, and strap it all down to anchor points so it doesn't get blown over. They should be fine, although they're definitely going to be extra extra cranky. 🐝