The number of bees in the Phoenix hive is getting smaller. It's been a couple of weeks while they wait for their emergency queen cell to hatch, their queen to mate and start laying eggs.

I opened them again yesterday. They have almost no stores of nectar, despite having a few gallons of syrup in a hive top feeder available to them.

I took a few frames and sprayed some sugar water into the cells.

I saw the new queen again today, and I know she's definitely a queen. I didn't have my queen marking pen on me, so she remains unmarked.




I looked through each frame, and found one frame, that had 15-30 eggs in cells. For the purpose of helping my own memory, it's was frame 5 (from the right shown below).



I'm a little skeptical that these eggs are from this new queen, and not remnants of bad eggs from a previous queen or laying worker, as this frame was used last year in a hive that had laying workers.

I double checked, and there are only 1 egg per cell, and they appear to be new, but that's hard to say.

I marked the frame, put it back, and will check in a few days to see if they hatch into larva.