Some exciting discoveries!

So, right after I published that last post, I called the bee store to see if I could get a nuc and the answer was pretty much no.  The season for even that is gone by apparently.  The bee lady told me that my best bet was either to find a beekeeper that was willing to do a split with me (basically a nuc), or find a swarm on my own.  So, unless I come across one of those things, it looks like I will be beeless until next spring :(
   But, I did find some fascinating things when I was dismantling my hive!  I was wrong, there WAS some sign of brood, I just couldn't see it without taking the hive apart because the bees had built comb in the wrong direction, effectively gluing two frames together.  I still think the queen failed, because you could see that on one frame, brood had been laid and even some cells were capped off (covered) in a very organized section:

But in other places, the brood were laid in a very scattered, random way....one of the tell tale signs of a failing queen:

There was also a large number of earwigs (EWW....perhaps the only creature on the planet I despise) in the hive.  Not sure if they do any damage, i.e. eat larvae, eat comb etc, but I can't imagine they are a helpful presence.

Then I also noticed that there were lots of little black dots on the bottom board....are these mites of sorts??  That would explain a lot if they are.....although I would have no idea what to do to prevent that in the future.

And remember I mentioned earlier on that a couple of the frames were foundationless, essentially making them into top bar frames.  Well, it turns out that they must have started building comb on that frame and for some reason did not build it straight in line with the top bar.  They built comb about 30 degrees off of parallel to the frame, making it so that they ran into neighboring frames fairly quickly.  Not sure why they went crooked, it looks like something was amiss right from the start.  Anyway, all very interesting.

There were some bees with their butts sticking out of a cell, perhaps in the middle of feeding larvae when they died.

Apparently bees die very suddenly, in the midst of an activity.  Anyway, this will bring this hive to a close.  Lots to think about.  Perhaps no more bees until next spring.  But even still, stay tuned for interesting bee factoids, articles and questions. :)