Pagden-ish?

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Keep an eye on them. I had a colony with one supersedure cell but I nuc'd the queen because I bottled it. I check them today a week later and they made seven more queen cells. So that supersedure cell was a swarm cell.

Ahhh, but was it? Or did they only make the extra cells because they suddenly realised you'd taken the queen, and wanted a backup plan in case their one supersedure cell was a dud?

I'm not saying you were wrong to nuc the queen. I'd have done the same.
 
Yes...maybe, but I still have the queen and the colony is absolutely huge. I looked in there yesterday. My chosen queen cell has disappeared and there were emergency cells in place so I actually have no idea what they are doing. The queen continues to lay up a storm in the nuc.
 
I do have another supersedure on the go. She is an old queen and her laying has slowed right down. She’s still nice and fat. Classic.
 
Well my plans didn't go quite as I wanted!!
I was just getting ready to inspect when the hive that had had more QCs swarmed. They are currently in a new hive in the (empty) neighbour's garden, I'll move them this evening to final position. Looking through it I found a lovely sealed QC, I guess I missed a charged cup with 3 day old larva 🤦‍♂️
The other hive I looked through, found open QCs, reduced to one. Despite looking through 3 times I couldn't find her majesty. I then tried the "shake/brush and smoke the through a QE (I've only resorted to this once a VERY long time ago). Still couldn't spot her! Repeated, but with the now beeless frames in the bottom box. Still no joy!
(In retrospect probably hiding in bee-space under the edge of the box above the QE). Giving up and shaking remaining bees in without QE I then spotted her slip down between the frames!!! It was the expected mayhem by now so unsurprisingly couldn't find her even now.
Knowing they are queenright I removed the one QC I'd left, and will give it another try in a few days😲 just hope I haven't missed any more!!
 
Looked at another 2 hives today, as expected both preparing to swarm. I'd seen quite a bit of scout activity in the last few days.
Nuced both queens, and cut back to 1QC.
🤞 all goes well!
 

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