I drove to my parents directly from work today in order to meet up with a fellow beekeeper who lives on my parent's road and was willing to check out my possible queen cell for me. I got there at 6PM. We suited up and opened up Artemis. We quickly found the frame in the brood box that had the suspect cell and he immediately confirmed that it was a queen cell. He spotted a few more on another frame in the upper brood box. We then proceeded to lift frames out of the lower brood box to discover even more queen cells. They are all capped and its a matter of time before the new queens will emerge and engage in sororicide till (hopefully) only one fit queen remains. We did not find any sign of the old queen, ie eggs, young larvae, the royal presence herself, so we suspect that I inadvertently squished her when I was dealing with the burr comb back in late May. If that is indeed the case, a new queen should take over the hive (assuming they don't all kill each other), and there will not be a swarm. After the last of the children of the old queen emerge, there will not be any new workers for almost a month, since the new queen will have to mate and lay eggs that will then take about 3 weeks to mature. I may take a comb of brood from Juno to give Artemis some reinforcements in that time of no brood.
Besides that, my comrade in smokers said that the hive looked pretty good with excellent brood (thanks to the old queen) and that the bees seemed very docile. He suggested that I feed them sugar water to promote wax building, but I don't think I can ask my parents to do that. And hopefully they are still getting plenty of nectar from the clover this is in bloom all around them in the fields. Titled the top covers on both hives to aid ventilation.
Good Night, Artemis-1. And flights of workers hum thee to thy rest.
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