Has this happened to you? You think it is about time to take a look at your bees; your internal bee alarm says it has been long enough since the last inspection to warrant getting in the hive again. You open up the hive, and they are a little noisierthan usual and they are not boiling out of the top super like you were expecting given the current nectar flow. Your mind starts processing this input and given your knowledge of beekeeping, immediately you suspect something is amiss and continue your inspection. Digging further down in the hive you notice the bee numbers are much lower than expected and there are more drones than you like to see. As you reach the brood area it is becoming more and more clear that your hive is probably queenless or maybe they swarmed. At this point a vague memory comes into your mind about the last time you inspected this hive - it did not seem exactly right then even though you saw lots of bees and capped brood. Did you see the queen or eggs? You can't remember. Backthen you made a mental note that this hive needed to be monitored a little more closely, but as soon as you went to the next hive or the phone rang or you got stung on your finger, that mental note vanished until now, when the situation is much more challenging than if you had only remembered to follow up sooner. This has happened to me more times than I like to admit!
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