Friday morning a bear tore apart one of our two hives.  In the time I have
lived here we've only seen a bear once, along with signs of his passing
through, but we hadn't seen even sign before or after so I thought we were
safe.  I thought wrong.

Anyhow, we spent two days in record breaking heat and humidity getting some
electric fencing in.  Now that the bee yard is (hopefully) safe, I am
figuring out what to do for the colony that was attacked.

The day of the attack and the following day there was very little activity
outside of the hive.  The brood frames were not removed from the bottom
brood chamber (during the attack I mean), but it had been flipped over so
many bee were probably crushed between frames.  We didn't see our queen,
so we just crossed our fingers.  Yesterday and today the bees were flying
again.  I'm guessing that they had a lot of cleaning up to do and were
focussing on that for a couple days.

We were told that the best way to tell if our queen had been killed was to
wait three days, then look for eggs.  No eggs - no queen.  Makes sense to
me, and that's what we have done.

We didn't see any eggs, but then I never have.  Either they are just too
tiny for my eyes (which are not all that great) or I just haven't figured
out what they look like.  I consider that test to be inconclusive because of
my own inexperience.

We did find two cells that *sort of* look like supercedure cells. (I'm
judging against drawings I've seen - I've never seen a real one).   They
were
in the right place, and they were vertically oriented, but they were much
smaller than I would expect from the few pictures I have seen.  They were
about 3/4 of an inch tall, and open on the bottom.  I couldn't really see
what was inside.

I'm trying to locate a new queen, but in the meantime I'm seeking comments
on what I saw.  Are queen cells that small at some point?  What does it mean
that they are open at the bottom?  Do they start that way, or does it mean
that the young queens have already emerged (obviously started before the
bear trouble then.)

Your sharing of experience will be much appreciated by this novice
beekeeper.

Frank.

-----
The very act of seeking sets something in motion to meet us;
something in the universe, or in the unconscious responds as if
to an invitation.  - Jean Shinoda Bolen