Never thought I’d see this…
Caught a hive last spring. It was a strong hive, with good honey harvest. Towards the end of summer, it split with a swarm. Might have swarmed twice. Hard to know. Thought the hive was doomed. After a few months, the bees were still active and bringing pollen in occasionally. 2 months ago i peeked into the view window and saw some drones! Crap! I figured hive was queen less and workers layed eggs in super.
Today it was warming up, so decided to open hive to take a look. Lo and behold, I found the queen up in the super! Crazy. I was able to move her down into the brood box, and many bees followed. Hopefully, this is a success!
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Hi John, welcome! Did you put the queen excluder on after moving her back down? If you already had it on that whole time, I wonder if the new queen post-swarming was able to get through before she was mated, then maybe returned through an upper entrance??
By the way, I don’t know how your winters are, if you have cold months without forage at all, but if so it’s better to take off the Flow super rather than remove the QX for this very reason 
Good point about inmates queen. I did put queen excluder on after I moved her down. Our winters are pretty mild. Always something blooming. I live in Santa Barbara, CA.
Hive seems to be doing better!
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