I am a first year beekeeper. I started noticing that my "borg" hive was starting to lag behind my "alpha" hive about a month ago. The "Alpha is doing great and I have started to add honey supers to it. I noticed that "Borg" seemed to have much less traffic flying in and out and many more drones flying than the other hive. I use 8 frame equipment and added the third box three weeks ago.
Today I opened the hives and the third box had hardly been worked and then found 3 peanuts on the bottom box. I could not find the queen but there was brood in all forms of development. see pic:
So I believe that the queen is still here but is weak and was not fertilized well.
Here are pics of the queens cells.
and
I had just ordered an extra hive from Brushy and if it gets here in time will try to somehow split the queens.
If anyone has any advice or thoughts on what my best coarse of action should be next I would appreciate it.
Thank you in advance
Merlin