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Problem could indeed be a faulty excluder. Swap it for a different one and check the one taken off. Most queens in supers are often down to the beekeepers procedure, rarely due to thin queens.

I was asked to help a beginner a few years ago who was in a panic having found loads of bees in the supers two days after adding the clearer board. She had put it on upside down!

Have seen this happen myself about ten years ago helping out a friend check his 30+ hives. A prime swarm from one of his colonies landed on the front of a different hive (about 5 hives away) housing a relatively small colony and went in with no obvious fighting. After about 20 minutes or so...

Got some supers out of storage on monday late in evening and stacked them temporarily next to the shed ready to take down to the out-apiary on tuesday. I like to check through the frames and remove and replace any with too much drone and any old black ones not forgetting to kill any wax moth...

I became fascinated with honeybees aged 10 after discovering an observation hive at Dudley Zoo. Undertook a beginners course in 1958 aged 11yrs and joined my school beekeeping club which had half a dozen colonies all housed in white WBCs . In early summer of 1959 I passed the BBKA...

Laying workers can fly perfectly well and will have flown back to the new nuc. I would shake them out. You can waste alot of time with such cases.

I recommend Index instruments. The one I bought from them 20+ yrs ago has never needed adjusting. They are refractometer specialists and have been making and selling refractrometers since 1975 (although they are getting some of them made in Asia these days)

Yesterday checked 26 colonies down at the out apiary but only one (with 2019 green queen) had made swarm preps with 5 large queen cells on the point of being capped and was dealt with. Will make some nucs from some of these next week as the colony is a productive and gentle one that hasn't...

Checked another batch of mating nucs today down at the out apiary. Better than expected considering the awful weather we had in May The combined results from both home and out apiary show 75% success 15 queens laying OK and all now marked white 5 fails (two absconded along with the bees, One...

Brood pheromone is much stronger at inhibiting workers from laying than queen pheromones. So three weeks or more after queen gone is when the problem usually appears. In Apideas etc which are set up initially without any brood, evidence of laying workers appears within days of a queen going...

Not likely to work and even if it did it would not be worth it as the bees in the nucleus are getting rather old and depleted in numbers so would not feed a larvae very well. Better the start from scratch. With 28 colonies and over twenty mating nuclei all in play I'm not going to be wasting...

Take two supers off shake the bees off the combs, extract and put back and repeat with the other two supers. Or shake bees off all combs in all four supers and give them a couple of empty supers to acccomodate the bees. Haven't used clearer boards for decades (apart from in demonstrating their...

Checked 9 mating nuclei in mhy garden today. results 6 queens laying OK, one nucleus robbed and died out (bees all dead in heap on floor and stores all eaten with cappings torn down typical of robbing) , One queen in Apidea seems to have disappeared (saw her a couple of weeks ago) and has...

I find it curious that with only two colonies you are using the nicot system when all you want is such a small number of Q cells. There are simpler and just as effective methods

Checked the 26 colonies at the out apiary . Not a swarm cell to be found. Liquid stores are still going down with the supers being emptied and honey being eaten back in the brood chambers. However loads of fresh pollen coming in and being stored (red horsechestnut pollen now coming in). Many...

I got fed up climbing up trees to recover swarms so for the last 20 or so years I now clip queens in their second season (queens less likely to swarm in their first season) when I see them in late spring. It is important to get some practise in picking up, holding and clipping using drones...

There is no simple answer. If the aggression is genetically determined the "long term" answer is to move the bees out to an isolated spot and requeen them with a queen from a gentler strain and not move them back until temperament has considerably improved (can take a few weeks although...

Hitchhikers guide?

Yes, I forgot that one but not in this case as the end of the cell is not brown (ie queen emerged , worker goes in, other workers stick the end flap back trappiong it inside). Why not open the cell and have a look to solve the riddle