I had a bee related text from one of the queen rearing group this morning.

She has a colony of yellow bees and 3 apideas with my queens on the same site, one mated and two virgins at the last count.

She lost a swarm from her yellow bee colony about a week ago and I said I would show her how to requeen it with a queen from an apidea. She removed all the queen cells.

I had a text from her this morning to say that she had found eggs in the yellow colony. I bet a virgin has flown from an apidea and taken over the bigger colony.

The two virgin queens were from a batch of 15 and I had 10 of them start to lay this week in apideas at my allotment so I am sure hers were flying as well.

There seems to be a lot of this going on this year. I'll report back when I have an update but I am betting that she will find a black queen in there.

One of mine swapped a 2 frame mating nuc for an 11 frame colony with queen cells last year.