Last week, I checked on the hives. I installed the thymol strip against the varroa mite. Then I checked the bottom board if I could see something. I saw this strange speck, looked like an animal with head and antennae and legs. I thought, "Oh no, mites." I sent a photo to Bill and Agnes asking whether this was a mite. Bbut they comforted me.
Agnes sent me some photos. Among others, this one, where one can see mites. They are much flatter and roundish than what one can see in my photo.
Agnes sent me a photo with queen cups, that is, cells in which the bees will raise to egg to become a queen. The bees will place royal jelly, aprotein rich secretion from special galnds, into the cup and then the egg develops into a queen.
Today, I checked both hives to see whether there are queen cups, and, if so, how far they are. There is a potential that the hive is getting ready to swarm..
I open the first hive. It was the stronger one, but now there is no development since Bill and I marked the queen. I go through all the frames but cannot find the queen. There are no eggs. DISASTER. The queen must be dead. I take this photo and go to the other hive.
On the second frame I check, I see the marked queen. There are lots of tiny eggs on the bottom of the cell in the brood chamber. One can see some queen cups and lots of burr comb and drone cells. Apparently they tend to be made at the extremities of the brood chamber because males are useless if it were not for the mating day.
br> I close up the hives and write to Bill and Agnes asking for advice. Bill writes to me later in the day that he had conferred with Agnes and that they would be coming on the next day to check and then we would see.