Opened the first hive today. Everything’s great. Queen check. Eggs check. Capped brood check. Bees happy check. Stores check.
Moved to the second hive.
Eggs check. Capped brood check. Stores check.queen check. Queen check!!!
WTH. two queens. Both marked. Hmmmm
Back to tthe first hive.
Queen gone. Bees buzzing madly.
Decision was made to cage one and put into queenless hive and release in 48hrs.
Caught queen in cage and snap she managed to fit through and goooooone.
Some days I tells ya.!
Wow, strange! Reminds me of when I had two broody hens and they insisted on sharing the same nest box. Maybe your two-queen hive liked it that way?
one was in the other hive when i inspected it moments before, she moved hives which I have never heard off before.
Hi Brett, welcome to our world 
A world where strange things happen. I wonder if they got together to compare markings…
quite possibly Jeff lol,
they were just staying near each other on the same frames, not really doing much I wandered if they were sizing each other up.
Did you manage to put the correct queen back into her hive? You wouldn’t want to put the wrong queen back, otherwise they both might get killed.
PS I know it’s hard to resist, however just be careful with young queens, they are very vulnerable to getting balled & killed for no apparent reason. Older queens are less prone to that. You’ll know if she appears more relaxed, that she has nothing to worry about. When you see them moving around quickly, to me that is a sign she fears for her life, not from us, but her colony.
no Jeff I caged her and she managed to find a gap big enough in the cheap plastic cage to fly out of and she gone. I wont know till I go back and check again to see if she returned or their making a new queen.
Sometimes it takes a few days for them to start making emergency queens unless they find the queen dead in the hive, in that case they would start straight away.
Forgot you said that, wow. Makes me think she was perhaps not mated?
If it’s the queens he got from me, definitely mated.
They were definately mated.
that’s interesting- I was just reading an ancient beekeeping book- the ABC of Bee Culture, 1901. The author was describing how a queen can get spooked during an inspection and fly away. He said most times she will be back within half an hour- but sometimes he said you should look in adjacent hives to see if you can see bees balling: if you do it’s likely the missing queen found her way to the wrong hive. It’s interesting that your two queens are on the same frame- they were possibly about to engage in Battle Royal- winner takes all.
I guess it’s possible the queen that escaped made it’s way back again?
Well an update.
Did an inspection this morning and the queen is definately gone. They are making a new queen. They did not appreciate my intrusion and told me so lol.
Hi Brett, thanks for the update, I hope you didn’t get too many stings.
This morning I found a colony with emergency queen cells. Either I killed her (a very young mated queen) or the bees balled her during my last inspection. I just take it in my stride.
nah no stings but they were being very sassy all the same,
Yeah well, you know what to do. Write down the date of when they went queenless & don’t go in for another 4 weeks. If you’re going to move them to the farm before the 4 weeks is up, do it sooner, rather than later. You wouldn’t want to move them during a period slightly before or during the time when the new queen will want to go on mating flights.
there already at the farm Jeff,
Well done Brett, are well, we’ll see if they successfully make a new queen or not.
cheers
That is really strange that the queen would just up and fly off Brett, but you can always expect bees do do the unexpected. Don’t disturb the hive for 4 weeks and very likely the colony will have produced a new queen and she is mated and laying so then look for new brood, eggs or larvae in bright sunlight, a magnifying glass is handy when looking for eggs. From the pic the worker bees didn’t seem to mind that there was a second queen in the hive, it isn’t common but I’ve read that it can happen that the colony is ok with a second queen.
Cheers
well another update,
they made a new queen and she is mated and laying, not many eggs as yet, I think she had only just started laying prior to my inspection, she is beautiful, shame it set the colony back but these things happen.
