Is She There or Not?

I still am a novice beekeeper, making the novice beekeeper's mistakes. Two weeks I checked on my bees, worried about how the capped brood I had found earlier had done through a cold weekend we had had. When I checked on the girls I discovered one capped swarm cell (a queen cell in the middle of the frame, poking out like half of a shelled peanut) and several queen cells with larvae in them hanging from the bottom. It was a classic pattern. Thinking I was going to prevent them swarming, I destroyed the queen cells and the swarm cell. Fast forward to last Friday.

Evan had been anxious to do a hive inspection with me ever since we got our bees. So he came out to assist this time. One of my goals, aside from checking on the spring progress of pollen and nectar collection, brood status, and new comb being drawn, was to clean out the bottom board of all dead winter bees. Boy were there a lot! Evan and I moved the upper brood chamber completely off the hive, and lifted out frames from the bottom chamber to clean out the piles of dead-and-beginning-to-mold bees. There was still some honey in the bottom chamber, and a healthy number of house bees working to clean things up. No brood, though.

As we put the upper chamber back on we went through each frame to see what was happening with the brood. There wasn't any. Not a single egg, or larvae or capped cell even. AAGGGH. I went inside and called a fellow in my beekeeping association chapter (if you're a beekeeper, being a member of a beekeeping association is so valuable!) to find out if I could order a queen from him. He wouldn't have any ready until May. He made some good suggestions about where to go and what to do. Called Harvest Lane Honey to see if they will be bringing in queens next week when I go pick up my new bees, and thankfully they will.

So. I re-checked the upper brood chamber yesterday, and I discovered a new queen cell in the middle of the frame on Number Seven. It was empty, but there's loads of activity around that frame and Number Six as well. Not sure what that means, but I looked hard to see if I have any laying workers (there would be two and three eggs showing up in cells), but couldn't see any evidence of any kind of laying activity anywhere. Nor did I see my old queen. Chris, my association contact, suggested I look hard for her and she would likely be difficult to spot since she would be very slimmed down from her laying size. I couldn't see her, and I looked long and hard for her. My bees were acting differently from usual too. They usually mostly ignore me, but this time there were bees landing and staying on my gloves and arms. I'll check my hive again in a few days to see if anything has happened with the new queen cell, but in any case I think I am going to purchase a new hygienic Italian queen when I pick up my new bees next week.