Someone forgot to tell the bees it's winter

[Wombat2]

Last weekend in April I set the hive up for winter - the top super full of honey - middle super empty except for two uncapped partial frames - winter mat on top of the broad box to keep the heat in.

My wife had an order for 2kg of honey from a regular customer and pestered me to see if I could get some honey to fill the order. Opened up and both supers were full with mainly capped frames and the blighters were building burr comb and filling it with honey. Only had 6 empty frames to swap over which produced just over 10kg on extraction.Guess I better take another look in a week or so.

[Garigal]

Tell me about it!

I extracted 14Kgs back in March and mine have almost refilled the super again. Six frames fully capped and four partially, plus another 4-5 five frames of honey in the brood box.

Today I did a quick inspection to add a hive mat over the brood box and in the process discovered a swarm cell on the bottom of one frame, then when I checked the next one I found a new queen wandering around (I'm sure she is new as she had a very furry thorax), not sure if she was mated.

To add to my confusion I then found the old queen wandering around on the same frame! She looks fine apart from slightly frayed wings and as far as I can tell has been laying quite well up till now and only 12 months old.

Can anyone offer any advice for this situation? I removed the capped queen cell and added my hive mat then closed them up again. Also have not noticed any swarms in the last week. Cheers

[jayj200]

split them