Week 3 with da bee's

I tried putting this blog up saturday but the site would not let me get pictures up so hopefully today i will be more successful :)
Well we decided to check both hives saturday instead of sunday due to the fact sunday was so busy....Kim and myself got changed and went down to check on the most important hive first no. 1 hive with the possible missing queen. I took the lid off and saw plenty of bee's around the queen excluder

we took out the 1st couple of frames and noticed that they were still drawing comb...a good sign

plenty of bee's and capped brood still

we even found uncapped brood as well as eggs.....trouble was that the 1st lot of eggs we came across, kim said that they were near the top of the cells which to be honest is not good as it still points to a drone laying worker.

Whats confusing is that we then came across some cells with eggs on the bottom of some cells

Anyway still no queen found......we quickly checked hive 2 and every thing there is alright with lots of bee's :)

it got to a point a couple of times where we had to puff smoke as they were buzzing around quite a bit lol

Anyway once both hives were closed up i decided to send an e-mail to 2 of our emergency mentors...within 1/2 an hour one rang me up and i told him the story of where we were at this point. Richard was very understanding but agreed that it seems the hive may still be queenless and that the workers had attacked and killed the new queen...the trouble was that we have so much conflicting evidence that makes it 100% sure that there is no queen. Richard mentioned that we could take a brood frame with eggs and brood on from our stronger hive and put it into the weaker hive....if the bee's build queen cells it means the hive is definetly queenless which is still not much help as we have left the hive so long and that something else is laying eggs namely the drone laying worker. All that does is provide me with  few altenatives
1) leave the hive to carry on producing male bee's only and will there for get smaller and smaller till the hive collapses then order a new nucleus for next year.
2) Get another queen...though how to get rid of the other egg laying worker is beyond me at the moment
3) shout and scream and stomp round the garden till i feel better.
Richard was at a loss what to suggest here so told me to contact another member of our local society which i have though as of yet i have had no reply :( we will of course be checking the hives next week so will leave the blog on bee's until then unless i hear from any of our fellow members....anyway thats it for now....thanks all for listening and until next week dont forget to tune in on the next exciting episode of BEE'S IN SPACEEEE....sorry i mean 'the warren apiary notes....diary of 2 beekeepers' :)