Her importance can not be underestimated. Everything the hive does, except for just about one thing, which we'll discuss later, is to make the Mother Bee happy and to provide her with the nourishment she needs to keep popping out eggs.
So my queen seemed to be doing great. At least she seemed to me to be doing great. Well right after that, our queen vanished. No note, no teary goodbyes, she just wasn't there anymore. Of course it was my fault or it least I was thinking of all the reasons it could be - maybe I squished her accidentally while moving frames around. Or maybe I inadvertently dropped her outside the hive while looking for her on previous inspections. I started having nightmares about squished bees.
Once I realized she was missing, I freaked out! I scrambled through my notes from my bee class, the class at Beez Neez Apiary was great but was my note taking? I found some sketchy details about re-queening but hardly enough to help make a decision. So I looked up a local expert. I called one of the mentors from the Westsound Beekeeping Association, there are several on the island. After a quick call I was relieved a bit but also started worrying. The mentors response to the situation was to leave the hive to itself and they would replace the queen. This relieved me because to buy a new queen would be expensive and take time to track down. His advice also had me worried too because I wasn't certain my bees would be up to the task. That was a big question and I couldn't just as the bees if they were up to it, I'd just have to wait and see. A hard task for a nervous nelly.
