A colony inspection - 20th April - showed a second year marked Queen, plenty bees. eggs sealed brood (good pattern), some sealed drone brood and plenty stores. The colony has good qualities and I had planned to rear Qs from it. Just over a week or so later a second inspection showed no eggs, some old-ish unsealed larvae, sealed brood and four sealed Q cells - no Queen (despite a second search). Thinking that something had happened to the Q I decided the best plan would be to make up an Apidea nuc and a Poly nuc, leaving 2 sealed Q cells in the colony.
Within the three or four day window that I estimated queen cells might hatch, I noticed (while on a "displacement activity" mid-day bee-hive watch) a warm dead queen on the nuc landing platform (it was light-ish brown but overnight on the kitchen table it turned dark and under a hand lens had all its "bits"). I am sure there was only one Queen cell on the introduced nuc frame and that the colony Q had not been transferred to the nuc in error.
Am I being optimistic in asking if anyone has an explanation or am I being too confident that I have not accidentally killed the colony Q or transferred her to the nuc?
Alan.