Confirmation

On Monday 11 Oct, I went into the hive again, this time with Bob looking at each frame with me. We did not see the queen. Bob then uncapped one of the lone capped brood cells that were there on a frame, and it was dead. It would appear that there hasn't been a laying queen there in quite a while, and certainly not enough nurse bees to keep up. Without new bee eggs being laid daily, and without new bees being born daily, it's easy to see how the hive population can quickly dwindle down in size ... as the older bees naturally end their life cycle, there are no new ones to replace them, and the hive population shrinks.

I did have a number of full frames that had wax capped honey and liquid syrup on them (and a couple of wax moths we squished in place). We proceeded to condense the hive down to a single deep - picking the best and most developed frames that have honey on them and placed them in this one deep ... added a mite treatment (Apiguard) that Bob had some excess of for me (thanks), and reassembled in this order: bottom board, condensed deep, medication on top, 1" spacer frame, top feeder, inner cover, the other deep (giving the bees a chance to clean out cells that have honey or syrup in them), and finally the top cover.

I went online and researched several sites to see if I could acquire another queen this late in the year. I found Rossman Apiaries in GA (1-800-333-7677) who will 2nd day a queen to me. I want to try it even if there is little chance of success in getting the queen fully mated this late in the season. So delivery is slated for Friday afternoon. Of course as timings go, we are due for heavy rain on Friday; so, I will install the queen on Saturday and sit back and hope for the best.

... and I thought it was going so well. ( It all adds to the education of this newbee beekeeper.)