We went into the hive that we were trying to make a split from. We had queen cells in this hive, and had even seen a queen a couple weeks before this. We went in to see if she had the opportunity to go on her mating flights and had started laying eggs. Much to our disappointment, there was no sign of her. We didn't see a queen, we didn't see capped brood, we didn't see larvae, we didn't see eggs. We have successfully raised queens, we just can't successfully get them back from mating flights. This is very discouraging and sad. We evaluated what to do next. We basically had 3 options. We could give it more time as maybe she was out on a mating flight and hadn't started laying yet, we could add brood from another hive to this one to keep laying workers at bay and hope they'll make another queen with what we give them, or we could combine this hive with another hive. On the plus side, this hive is making honey! It looks delicious. I've also put a picture of a drone. Drones can't sting and they die after mating. They are larger than worker bees and their little eyes sit right on top of their heads. I may be biased, but I think he is quite handsome!
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