Day 54: Still no new eggs...

Opened up the hive today, and sadly there are still no new eggs. There are plenty of bees, comb, honey, and pollen, but not a single egg. One thing that can happen once the queen has been gone for some time is that the worker bees start to lay eggs. These eggs are unfertilized, and can only develop into drone bees. These eggs are laid in a spotty pattern, often several at a time in one cell, and not at the bottom of the cell (since the workers have shorter abdomen, as compared to the queen). I haven't seen any of these types of eggs either, so there still is the possibility that there is a new queen inside the hive who has yet to start laying (either because she has not mated, or she isn't very strong).

Clusters of worker eggs

Relative sizes and abdomen lengths of bee castes

Last weekend I reached out to a local bee shop in my area, Crystal Bee Supply, about what to do about my eggless situation. They suggested that I wait out another week to give the virgin queen time to mate and start laying--with the wet weather we have had, they said it could take at least 3 weeks. If I were to install a new queen with one or two virgin queens in the hive, they would kill the new queen. They said that it would not be prudent to requeen until I was sure that there were no virgin or newly-mated queens in the hive, which requires an extremely thorough inspection by an experienced beekeeper.


The folks at Crystal volunteered to come and do a house call this week at my hive to see what is going on either on Monday or Tuesday, since they are just down the road. Amazing! I cannot wait to have some professionals give me their opinion as to what should be done next. Stay tuned.

Beecam installation & empty queen cells

Beecam set up, showcasing southeast-facing hive

Tech support and beekeeper extraordinaire, Ted

Despite the turmoil that has been transpiring in the hive this last week, I went ahead with my dream to acquire a beecam to watch the comings and goings of the hive during the week. On work days I leave the house while the bees are hidden inside the hive, and return home when they are again hidden inside the hive. The weekends come and I get to see just how active the colony is during the day. Ted graciously selected an appropriate outdoor worthy-camera, extended our wireless network out into the yard, hooked up the camera, and provided a web location for the live feed to reside for your enjoyment, tedfoss.com. The software that runs the camera requires a log in (mindthebuzz) and password (mindthebuzz1), and then you must click on the tab that says “single” to view the feed. You can change the resolution of the image, as well as several other parameters from the webpage to suit. Please let me know if you have any trouble logging in.

Screenshot from the beecam, showing second broodbox

Development timeline for a worker bee from a fertile egg

Shown is a screenshot of the hive today--what a delight! If you are lucky when tuning in, you may also see birds, bunnies, or beekeepers in the beecam from time to time. We have also decided to rotate the hive 90 degrees to face southeast (the bees clearly seem to prefer this angle, as they were only using the southeast side of the entrance in the previous orientation), which additionally facilitates better viewing with the camera.

I opened up the hive today and was happy to see that the queen cells from last week are now empty, and the hive was bustling. If we are lucky there is one new suitable queen who will be able to mate and start laying eggs ASAP, before the hive population starts to drop. I didn’t see any new eggs yet, but I also didn’t see any evidence of worker bees laying infertile eggs either, which is good. Most of the old brood is hatched, which is to be expected given at least two weeks without a queen (as you can see in the development timeline). There is just a hint of the start of new comb in the second brood box, so perhaps the bees are enjoying the new addition to their home.