I've always thought that even though we call her the queen, the workers have control over what happens in a hive.
In my obs. hive, it looks like they were planning on swarming. Even though they are only 1 deep and 1 medium frame, there were extra bees hanging around. Then they started about 5 or 6 swarm cells. I thought a swarm was imminent.
The first QC was capped a few days ago.
Then that same day, I noticed that 2 of the cells were ripped open from the side, and the bees were re-absorbing the contents. A queen had her head buried in an open cell doing something in there for quite a few minutes. I thought perhaps she was a newly hatched virgin that I had missed (she's a bit small from having some comb restrictions) but I'm pretty sure I saw her laying eggs.
Then they repaired the queen cells, and it looked like they were working on the QC's again.
The bees have been doing practice swarming/clustering on the entrance of the hive, to the point of one night a small cluster hung off of the entrance on the side of the house for the whole night. Small swarm (from a small hive) and I couldnt' find the queen in the hive, I'm sure that she was in that swarm/cluster. Then, this morning they all went back in.
Now the queen is laying again in the hive, there are still extra bees in there. I don't think that the QC's are active any more.
Really confusing. :? I don't think that I'm even going to try to understand.
Rick