I spoke with Tom at Bee Genetics on Monday. When I described the problem of no queen seen and no apparent brood cells, he wasn't too concerned. When I mentioned the two queen cells, he immediately said he would send a replacement queen.
The queen arrived Wednesday in her cage with about a half dozen workers. Because of work schedules, I wouldn't be able to inspect the hive with an experienced keeper until two days later. I wanted to be sure that my hive was queenless before putting in a new queen, of course. Here Kathy and I are looking vainly for the old queen. No queen, no brood and unhappy workers. We put the caged queen in the hive between two frames. We wanted to look in three days to make sure she was out; if not, she would need to be hand released. Once again my work schedule interfered with my bee schedule. Kathy offered to look for me, which she did today. The queen was out. Whew!
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