My last visit to Suffolk was a month ago and my visit and inspection today has told me a little more. It seems that I may have a drone laying queen or the queen that was there today is a new queen that hasn't come fully into lay yet.
The larger colony did have a queen in the hive and it wasn't my old marked queen. So she is either a new queen raised from the few eggs I put in the hive on my last visit a month ago or she replaced my old marked queen last year. As I don't know which of those two she is I have taken her out of the hive with another frame of bees and a frame of stores and set her up in another box. If she can lay eggs then she will have by the time I visit next. If there are still only drone cells on my next visit then I will know that she is not going to make it. As there weren't patches of worker brood I fear the worst but I want to be sure.
Having taken the queen out of the hive I open the other hive that had a small colony with a laying queen on my last visit. It still had a small colony with a laying queen - or eggs at least- as I didn't see the queen. I took out one frame that the queen had just started to lay on where there was a small patch of eggs surrounded by fresh pollen which in turn was surrounded by old stores of honey. The recent warm weather had induced the queen to lay a few eggs. It seemed mean to steal them but I needed a few eggs to go in what was now a queenless hive.
I took a nuc box out to Old Costessy As I wanted to check Norman's number three hive and if there were two frames with queen cells on remove one into a nuc box. There was a frame with a queen cell and a frame with an uncompleted queen cell. I took out the frame with the queen cell plus a couple more frames and put them in a small nuc box. The bees in the original brood box can now finish making the last queen cell. I can now forget about opening that box until the 20th May.
I checked the little heap of dead bees again and in the ful light of day did find a marked red queen amounst them. I'm not sure how she got out of the hive. Did I remove a crown board with her on it?
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