A bit of background...

I started with one hive in the spring of 2009. It built up and survived winter with 2 deeps and 2 supers. A deep is a big, deep hive box and a super is smaller. The supers are for collecting honey in. If they are to big you cant very well harvest honey unless you are the size and strength of dear Andre the Giant.
Last spring, 2010 my hive chugged along. I had still 2 supers on top. It survived winter but no honey. A friend of mine, Jeff, gave me a hive had that was full of bees and after a lot of learning and work, we transported it to my home. Betsey, at Busy Bee Apiary has been a huge help to me through all of this. Well, hive number one (now named Alpha) robbed that new hive and it was done. But Alpha took off in numbers. I fed it well, they made lots of food and survived a very long, cold winter for NC.
So, Alpha took off this spring. New brood coming out of the hive, growth in great numbers... and swarming? Oh, I am learning this is a delicate art. More growth in numbers... I switched the bottom deep for the deep on top. Bottom was empty at that point. Lots of bees. So, Alex and I go in and take 3 short super frames off Alpha (they are full of brood) and a frame from the second deep. We split the hive! I never thought I could do this on my own.
Now it seems like Alpha may have lost its queen then- either from our split and maybe we took it to Beta (hive #2) or a swarm. When Judy and Frank were visiting, Alex heard a loud buzzing near the red tips near the garage. Do we have queens or not. I went in and saw some queen cells. That means they are either 1) ready to swarm so making new queen to leave with the remaining bees or 2) queenless and making and emergency supersede. .... To be continued...