Follow up on the condition of Bravo Hive....
Well, finally had a decent enough day of weather to go in and take a look. Unfortunately, it looks like my fears of this hive having gone queen-less appear to be true.
Here are some snapshots of the inspection...not sure how helpful they will be. Seemed to be a pretty good number of bees, however, I saw no covered brood, larva, or eggs and there was a bit of a mess of the bottom board.
I reached out to both Bailey and Schawee who took the time to listen and help me devise a game plan for moving forward. I did my best to try and select a frame with new eggs from Alpha hive and moved it to Bravo to give them an opportunity to make a queen. (Unfortunately, as green as I am, I'm not very confident in my selection
)
I also took one of my new frames of foundation being drawn out in Alpha and moved it to the center...hoping the queen will lay there should I need to attempt this again.
On a positive note, Alpha hive seemed to be booming. To the point they were drawing comb all on the underside of the inner cover and within my internal feeder stand. I gave them a new box of foundation.
We'll see!