I finally got into my hives. I pulled off the Mann Lake Feeders and generally cleaned things up. The underside of the feeders were a mess--filled with comb and sadly, capped and uncapped brood. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle those particular feeders in the future, but I need to make something so there's not so much room for them to hang comb because I'm not doing that again. Lesson learned. I am second guessing myself in thinking I maybe should have left the feeders on so the brood could hatch. Too late now, and I hope to mitigate that from happening again in the future, but what should I have done?
I got a little too focused on what to do with the feeder on the first hive that I later realized that the queen may have been in with the bees that were attending the brood on the comb in the feeder. I don't think she was, but I never did see her, and I sure hope I didn't kill her. I did find the queen laying eggs on the second hive, which was reassuring. It got too late to go back to the first hive and open it up to look for the queen, and tomorrow we may have thunder storms, so it may not be until mid week before I can get in there again.
One thing that kind of threw me was on one of the Plasticell foundations in the middle of the hive was comb that was sideways; that is, the comb extends off the foundation the same distance as the rest of the comb, but the cells run parallel with the foundation *and* parallel with the top and bottom bars of the frame. There was bee space on either side (on the end-bar sides on both sides) so the bees could enter the cells. Other than that strip of oddly placed cells in the middle of the frame, everything else is normal. My guess is that it matched the comb coming off the feeder, but that's an afterthought and there's no way to tell at this point.
Despite the strong scent of bananas, the bees were remarkably docile, and everything I'd worried about was unfounded. Lots of capped brood on the frames, and I'm just about ready to add a second box. The bees are doing their thing. I just hope I didn't kill the queen in my west hive.
Sorry for lack of photos. It was all I could do to remember where I'd put my hive tool much less take photos.