Guess what we found

Seth does the heavy lifting

Seth and I went into the hive today with Julie photographing and Karly observing. We made some very interesting discoveries.  But before I get to that, here's what Jeremy Rose had to say  in response to my last email regarding the capped brood cells I saw on last look: "Anything could have happened, but at this point I would say that if the brood is viable (sounds to me like it is all drone brood but I can't see what it looks like) you can requeen the hive.  If it is all drone brood then I would just let it die."  I would have liked to have had a photo to send him.

Italians among the Russians on capped honey

Upon looking into the brood chamber, one of the first things we saw was many Italian bees.  We guess that maybe 5% were Italians.

Capped brood with surrounding pollen and capped honey

There was still capped brood, perhaps a larger area than before, but still not a lot and only on one frame.

Close up of capped brood cells

I took out the drone frame.  There were lots of capped cells as well as larvae in varying stages of development and eggs.  There has to be a queen in there somewhere.  I brushed the bees off the drone frame and set it with the few remaining bees on the ground and put a new drone frame in the hive.
Because of the capped brood cells and the single eggs in the drone frame, I continued to suspect that there was a queen in there somewhere.  We looked at the brood frame, but couldn't spot the queen.  Time to get out of the hive.  We had some photos of the brood that I would send to Jeremy for his interpretation.
We put the hive back together and I picked up the drone frame.
There were still a few bees on it, and I was looking at a bunch of Italians when I saw her- the Queen!.

It was quite fortuitous that a) she had not fallen or crawled off the frame onto the ground and been lost and b) that I spotted her.  After Seth ran and got the camera to take the pictures, we brushed her off the drone frame into the top of the hive where she could work her way back to the brood chamber.
Before putting the drone frame into the freezer, Seth and I examined it, admiring the centripetal progression of egg to tiny larvae to gradually enlarging larva to capped cells.  We took out one pupa and it had no mites on it.  We saw one dead mite embedded in the cap of one cell.
So, it looks like I have a laying queen, albeit with some, if not all, Italian off-spring. I figure I'll requeen regardless with a Russian with mite resistance from Jeremy later this month.  I emailed Jeremy with the photos this time.