Yesterday I did a quick hive check on Middle Hive, which was in the process of making their own queen the last time I peeked in. As luck would have it, the beekeepers' meeting immediately following my queenless hive discovery was all about raising queens, and the speaker totally freaked me out about the perils of the first few weeks of a virgin queen's life, not to mention the amazingness they go through on their mating flights. I was completely prepared to find a dying hive when I opened things up.
But nope- my girls knew what they were doing (um, magic), and I found capped brood and eggs! Can you see the single little egg in the bottom of each cell in the zoomed-in photo? They did it! They recognized when their queen perished with enough time to turn one of her last eggs into a new queen, they raised her, she took her mating flight and made it back to her own hive, and now she's laying!
Bees are amazing.
My other two hives are doing well, too. I think I'll need to order a couple new honey supers soon. So good news all around today.
Yay bees!
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