A week after Garrett helped inspect my hives, and we saw eggs in my original hive, I looked in again. The queen was nowhere to be seen, but they can be pretty elusive. But the I found no eggs, and only very mature larvae and capped pupae. That means the queen is probably AWOL or dead. To make matters more definite, the vast majority of the capped brood was drones. That means she didn’t mate well, and is thus a dud. Make that a missing dud.

No worries, I thought. I have two brand-new...

selchie