During last weekend's inspection, I didn't see any brood, eggs, etc. in the brown hive. I saw what I thought was a queen, but she wasn't marked, so she was a new one. I was wondering if she was new from late last year, or early this year - but I didn't see any queen cells either last fall or now. In any case, I grabbed her last week and marked her with a white dot to make it easier to find her. I wanted to check later to see if she would lay any eggs.
So I took a quick peek today, as the temperatures were in the mid 50's, and the bees were flying. I didn't pull all the frames, but I wanted to see queen evidence. I saw some frames which could have been eggs in the cells, but it was hard to tell because 1) I was looking through a veil, 2) the sun was in the wrong place, and 3) I'm old. I pulled a 2nd frame to check, and lo and behold I saw the queen I marked last week! Here's a picture:
I watched her for a little while, and was amazed I saw her sticking her rear end into cells looking like she was laying eggs! Here's a picture I took; if you zoom in on it and look carefully, you can see her rear end bent into a cell:
So I am going to hold off on getting another queen for another week, to see if there were really eggs being laid. That hive didn't take much of the sugar syrup, and still has 1 1/2 patties of pollen, so they have enough resources.
Pink Hive
While I was out there, I wanted to check out the pink hive. In the upper supers, there is still developing brood, but no new eggs since I put the queen in the lower box under a queen excluder:
I checked the bottom box, but didn't see any eggs or brood. But I got lucky twice in the same day; I spotted the queen on the frame I pulled out, so she is there. Not quite sure why she isn't laying yet, but it could be because of the brood in the upper chamber is keeping the nurse bees up there. Hopefully with more bees being born, the queen will kick into gear.
Pink's syrup jars were empty, so I added some more syrup.
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