I suspect two queens

[Cazza]

Last week I found eggs above and below the QE. No time to hunt for queen so left til this week. Still eggs above and below. I thought this must be a runty queen but in the BB there was a large brown queen, far too big to slip through the QE.
No time again to go through the super, going to have to wait til next week (out apiary so only seen weekly.)
What do you reckon? Two queens is my guess.
Cazza

 

[Pman]

Check the QE carefully for damage and try changing it if you have another, it happens easy and the first you know is brood where it's not always wanted.

 

[Tom Bick]

Have the eggs from last week developed into anything?

 

[Cazza]

Yep, perfectly healthy worker brood in the super
Cazza

 

[Headnavigator]

Another 'maybe' is workers carrying eggs up into the super. It has been known!

 

[Cazza]

Possibly but it would be a hell of a lot of moving of a large number of eggs so I think it is unlikely.

Cazza
Thinking about this, this queen's mother also ran with another queen born at the same time. Perhaps it's a genetic trait?

 

[MandF]

Possibly but it would be a hell of a lot of moving of a large number of eggs so I think it is unlikely.

Cazza
Thinking about this, this queen's mother also ran with another queen born at the same time. Perhaps it's a genetic trait?

I had the same thing a couple of months ago, united what I thought was a q- and a q+ colony, later found eggs above and below, thought she might be a runt, removed the qx anyway risking the two queens killing each other if I had two, then inspected a few days later and saw both queens, each on one side of the brood box.

One was an emergency/small queen so I decided to remove her rather than risk them running into each other and fighting, and the runt winning the fight!