First inspection of the year: both alive, one queenless?
The first proper look inside came on a still Saturday at 16 °C, which is about the lowest I am willing to open brood. Both hives had been flying on the warm days since February and taking down fondant, and both had been hefted every fortnight through the winter, so I was fairly confident they were alive. Confident is not the same as knowing.
Hive one, the original colony, was exactly what you want to see. Bees on seven frames of the brood box, four frames with brood in all stages, eggs standing up in the cells like tiny grains of rice, a good arc of pollen above the brood and sealed stores on the outer frames. I saw the queen on the fourth frame, marked from last year, moving steadily. The floor insert showed a scatter of wax cappings and perhaps five mites in a week, which for April is acceptable. I closed up within eight minutes.
Hive two was the worry. Bees on five frames, calmer than hive one, almost too calm. Two frames with sealed brood, a little open brood, and no eggs that I could find on two careful passes. No queen seen, though she was unmarked and that colony has always hidden her well. Sealed brood means a queen was laying at least nine days ago. No eggs means either she has stopped, or she has died, or I missed them in the shade of the fence at four in the afternoon.
The temptation was to do something. Order a queen, take a frame of eggs from hive one, start planning. I did none of it. A colony with sealed brood and no eggs in April has a spread of ordinary explanations: a laying pause in a cold week, a queen that has only just started again, or simply my eyesight. The rule I have set myself is that a queen question gets a second inspection a week later before any action, because the one time I did act immediately I introduced a new queen to a colony that had one, and lost the new one.
Seven days later, at 18 °C: eggs on two frames, and a glimpse of a dark unmarked queen hurrying over the comb. She had paused and resumed. I marked her while I had her, which took three attempts and a crown of thorns cage and more nerve than it should.