Relief

I appreciate it's all a bit involved for readers about Hive Amidala and how I was worried the colony had swarmed.....anyhow during the recent hive splitting exercise I removed some wild (drone) comb from the bottom of the frame where the queen cells were, and I popped this in my bag. I only checked it this morning (to show the kids some comb) and was DELIGHTED to spot eggs at the bottom of every cell. This gives me good confidence the queen is still in residence. I'm also pretty sure I removed all the queen cells to form that new colony (Cleopatra) so all is hunky-dory. Will the Amidala bees still think of swarming and make more queen cells, or will the removal of all those bees mean there's enough queen pheromone to go round the rest and they will want to stay? I don't know, but I now feel more in control and am looking forward to my next inspections. I will certainly have my nice bright white marking pen at the ready in case I do spot the queen this time.