Regicide

Well it looks like the I have a queen in the main hive, I can only assume that the small queen I have just seen has killed off the competition. Mind you she is very small, I wonder will she be up to the challenge of keeping a colony of 40,000 bees happy?

It maybe that she is still a virgin queen and is yet to make her mating flight, it's very possible because there is no sign of eggs or larvae and the few capped brood that remain must be the last of her mothers brood in the colony?

Thinking about it logically she can't be too big otherwise she won't be able to fly, once she has had her fun on the wing the workers will fatten her up. I hope so anyway, she was hard to spot.

Now I will wait to see if eggs, larvae and new brood appear before I sell the nuc to a friend of a beekeeping colleague at work.

It's a big relief finding the queen, this beekeeping can be quite stressful! :-)