Rescued!

So, I did drop the queen on Wednesday when I tried to release her.  I didn't find her Wednesday night, but as I was walking by the next day I noticed that there were a lot of bees hanging out in an area that bees really shouldn't be hanging out.  Sure enough, the queen was hanging from a plant near the hive.  I scooped her up and put her back in the hive.  I hope that they won't reject her.  If they do then I'm in no worse position than I was Wednesday and can give them a ripe queen cell.  It won't tell me anything about my isolation+OAV experiment, but they'll be queenright.

In other queen news, the white hive in the back yard FINALLY has a queen!  So far, I'm only seeing eggs, so she hasn't been laying long, but I saw her with her back end stuck into an empty cell.  These eggs will be ready for foraging in early to middle July, so that should give them a decent foraging force for goldenrod in the fall.  I would expect their mite numbers to be pretty low, but that's yet to be seen.