First of all a big thank you to all those who proffered advice on my wandering,
and subsequently vanished queen.
 
Last week I ordered a new queen, as a follow-up inspection to the one I first
described yielded no sign of a queen or eggs. It did yield a couple of queen
cells which (wrongly, I soon realised) I destroyed. The advice I got immediately
after that said: there's no option but to re-queen, so I ordered one last week,
and installed her yesterday evening (still no sign of the old queen, no brood
and a couple more queen cells which (rightly this time I hope) I destroyed. I
now have to wait to see whether she takes. As I have only one hive (and have had
that for less than six weeks) I was not able to provide the hive with a frame of
brood, so I suspect there will be a hiatus while the new bees mature.
 
 In the meantime, I have a question if anyone has any views.
 
1. When I visited the hive yesterday to requeen, a fair number of bees were
clustered outside on the front. It was rather warm and humid (more than that in
my bee suit).
 
2. I put a super on some time ago, with a queen excluder. Although I do find a
few bees up there, there does not seem to have been any comb drawn out or honey
stored.
 
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the reluctance of bees to draw
comb the wrong side of an excluder and I am wondering whether I should remove
the excluder. The points in favour I can think of are that it will give the bees
more space (if the clustering outside is significant, that could be important)
and that it'll encourage them to begin drawing the comb. The points against are
that it will be a disruption of the hive while the queen is settling in and it
will double the amount of space I have to look through to check whether she has
settled in.
 
Any suggestions or views would be appreciated.
 
Thanks
 
Leo Walford
Central London