Sasha, Sasha, Sasha!

I had been thinking that I should replace the queen in the Sasha hive as she's just not laying like gangbusters. But what she does lay is done in a good pattern as you can see in this photo. This frame is in the top box (of two mediums) and you can see she's eager to lay even before the frame is fully drawn out with comb.

I'm finally happy with the population of the hive, bees are everywhere and boy, are they gentle! Inspected all the frames today as I was hoping to see full frames of brood in the four frames I added after extracting the honey last week. But what I found besides the frame of brood pictured above was nectar being stored in most of the frames of the top box.

And I found another surprise — a  beautiful supersedure cell not yet fully capped. Those smart bees made the decision for me! How that egg got up there is a mystery. You can see there are no other eggs in the cells around her as well as elsewhere on that frame.

Because the life cycle of a bee is so regimented, we know she'll be fully capped by day 8 (and she certainly wasn't there 7 days ago) so that will help us know what to expect. She should emerge about July 18 or 19th, take her nuptial flights around the 23rd to the 27th and I can expect to begin to find eggs anytime after the 26th.

I did a very careful inspection of the bottom box and it was difficult to find eggs anywhere. I ended up taking photos of the likely brood frames in order to blow them up on the computer and then I did see some eggs. There is a small amount of larva but very few capped pupae. I found the queen, seen here. Take a last look at her because she will be going to the big hive in the sky very soon.

I've heard a lot of beekeepers says that the bees mostly except emergency queens until they make their own and that the same goes for fall requeening... they will accept her until they can make their own. I'm sure that has been the case with this hive. The population in this hive is finally at a point where it is strong — the two medium supers are pretty full with bees.  

It has been a fun learning experience to do a walk away split. But it has also been a struggle nearly every step of the way. We're now at the end of this queen's life and the beginning of a new learning experience for me as I watch the next queen work to build up the hive for the winter.