3 Weeks Away From the Hives

We left for a trip Out West on July 4th and the bees were doing fine.  Our friend, Bev stopped by and texted these pics on July 17th, almost 2 weeks into the trip.  We returned home late on Tuesday, 7/23, and checked the hives on Wednesday, 7/24.  The colony of bees in Hive 4 (in the bottom photo, hive 4 is on the left-hand side) were acting a little crazy.  They were flying around and around the hive.  On Thursday, 7/25, my husband went into the hive and there was no Queen, no larva, no pupae, no nothing.  Just a whole lot of bees with no leader.

We called our local bee suppliers and neither place had a Queen in stock.  However, the SC Beekeepers were holding their annual meeting in Clemson and one of the suppliers gave me a gentleman's name and number.  When I reached him by phone, he was at the beekeepers meeting and told me that he would have a Queen for us to pick up on Friday at the Clemson event.

I'm learning that you can never second guess what will happen with bees.  They looked fine when we left and they looked fine 2 weeks into our trip.  After checking everything out, it seems that the Queen took off for vacation when we did.