Checking for activity

The weather has been so variable that I haven't been able to get into the hives to really check things out until today. One hive has always had less activity than the other so I thought it would be safer to start with that quieter crowd.  Since I was a bit nervous (ok, a LOT) nervous after my stinging session last time, I put on so  many layers that I looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man from "Ghostbusters". I may have looked silly but it did keep the girls at bay. They've been going through sugar syrup pretty rapidly which I was hoping was a good sign but unfortunately, I didn't see any eggs laid at all in the first hive.  Now, I'm not 100% sure of what I'm looking for but all I could see was a moderate amount of bees and pure white comb which leads me to think that the queen is either weak or gone.  I don't know, maybe she decided she really wasn't a stay at home Mom and left with the idea that the corporate world was for her but.....I believe we have an issue here.

The second hive has always looked much busier from the outside and that was certainly true on the inside as well. There seemed to be substantially more activity, there were bees building comb on 8 or 9 of the frames and there was some patterns on three or four of those; I think it's capped brood or eggs.

Since I'm not really sure what to do next-especially about the first hive-it's time to call on someone with experience.  As I mentioned, our bee school assigned us all mentors for just such occasions so I have a call in to ours to see what he thinks of the things happening and not happening here. If we need to replace the queen in the first hive, there is an apiary not too far away that should have some available queens.