And then there was one...

Well, we lost the weak hive. Anson noticed there were fewer and fewer bees down to a population that he did not think would survive. He could not identify the queen, though we knew that would be difficult because she was unmarked and small so would easily blend in with the worker bees. He also only saw larva, and based on this blog post charting development cycles we can conclude she was laying 6 days prior. However, this was not sign enough she was prolific. For all of these reasons Anson decided (under Poppop's mentorship) to combine it with the other stronger hive. So, now we are down to one hive which hopefully we can keep alive until next spring when the pollen and nectar will flow enough for us to get some honey out of this whole deal!

After some discussion and thought we have decided that our queen source (Bailey Bee Supply in Raleigh) is of poor quality and that we should find another supplier next year.