Beeking is Never Boring

Last week I sold my Minnesota Hygenic queen Freyja to a friend who needed one. On the same afternoon, I combined that hive with a nuc containing one of my new Russian-Carniolan queens (Svetlana). I also sold a nuc with a homemade queen to another friend. Finally I'm getting the hive numbers back to normal.

Yesterday I had a small break in the weather, so checked on my combined hive. In the top I found Svetlana, and she had loads of brood - yay. Then there was a "storage" box below with some nectar, no brood. In the very bottom boxes (Freyja's old palace) I found more brood of all ages AND three open queen cells (on a drone frame, of all places). They must have been hidden by masses of bees last time I checked - a lesson to shake off those girls. So I popped in a queen excluder and a spacer/upper entrance for the boys. In a few days we'll see what kind of brood is in the bottom. I may well have another homemade queen on my hands.