Situation analysis - More relaxed hive inspection.

So, it's two days since I last went into the hive.  At that time, I annoyed the bees by dusting with icing sugar. - I wasn't relaxed, and they certainly weren't.  Worryingly, I didn't see the queen, and I found several sealed queen cells.  - The queen cells, and the rowdy bees at that time meant I wasn't really concentrating on what I should have been, and didn't do a good job at evidence gathering. - So, my plan was leave them alone for a day or two and take a proper look at what was going on. - I left work at lunch time today as the weather was due to be warm, and intended to have a better look around.  Specifically, could I see eggs, and could I see the queen.  Then, I might have enough evidence to contact someone more knowledgeable.

In the 'super', we have a good frame here showing some capped brood, some pollen surrounding, and some honey around that.

Here we can see capped brood, pollen and around the centre of the picture, a couple of uncapped lavae.  From what I understand, at the stage they fill the bottom of the cell like this, they were probably eggs laid around 8 days ago. - So, we know the queen was laying at that time.

Here's a frame from the brood box - Not a bad shot showing the grubs at the left hand side of the frame - looking like children's teeth as I believe they should.

I still couldn't see eggs anywhere - the next two shots show some of the queen cells we found.  This one appears sealed.

There are two cells in this next shot, but one of them appears damaged - I don't think 'hatched' - maybe just not viable.

Finally as we were beginning to give up hope of finding the original queen, my daughter's eagle eyes spotted her.

So, in conclusion we've seen grubs, capped brood, we've seen the queen, though we have not seen eggs - which in any case are hard to see, and we've seen several capped queen cells.  I wonder if the apiguard has put the queen off laying properly, and this could have caused the bees to build queen cells?  Anyway, I think I've now got enough of an idea of what's in the hive to ask someone more expert which will be my next move.