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This is an experiment I intend to perform again this year and slightly more vigarously. It would be useful to get a couple more people doing it, gives less margin for error!

Thanks for the link! I've not watched them with an egg in their mouths... but.. I've had the queen separated from her eggs and had fertilised eggs (they grew into viable queens) in queen cups (not drawn out worker cells) that were empty before seperating the queen... Though I cannot say...

Thank you! I had assumed that this had been confirmed, surely it's been seen in observation hives too, I simply couldn't find anyting actually stating that it had really been seen and not just been assumed. It is reasonably simple in a home apiary to confirm that worker bees move eggs into...

But this would only confirm that the workers move the eggs, doesn't prove whether or not the queen lays in them herself sometimes.

It makes more sense to me that the workers are doing all the egg placing in queen cells, but I'd be happy to be wrong! I'm not sure how it could be proved either way!

What!? Do beekeepers really do that;) Shocking

Yes I've read everything I can find on the subject and come up with- Queens probably don't lay in queen cells. As nearly every book states that the queen lays directly into the queen cell I'm assuming there is something I've missed. Though none of them have a picture!

This was the other line I was thinking along, another set of stimuli to trigger off laying fertile eggs. It's just not anything I've seen any research into which seems rather odd as everything else to do with bees seems to be delved into at great length

A queen bee measures a cell before laying in it, this produces a trigger that essentially switches on or off her ability to lay a fertilised or non fertilised egg. So in larger cells she lays drone eggs and in smaller cells she lays female eggs. How then does she figure out how to lay a female...

To be honest, if it's too dangerous for you to collect the swarm don't do it. A couple of years ago a prime swarm of mine went into the top of a very high poplar tree, I was sad to watch it go but it wasn't worth breaking my neck for. Keeping a few catch hives near to your apiary may help draw...