Hi All and Thanks for all the advice.

The balled queen (she is highly "pedigreed" instrumentally
inseminated AM scutellata) was moved on Sunday afternoon, caged in
her roaring hive, some 20 metres. It was a bright sunny autumn day.
Two hours later the hive was moved to another location 15m away.
The field bees were caught in a new hive on the original stand and
given a frame of young brood and eggs from another hive (to start
queen cells), and three deep frames of honey.

Going back to the hive with the caged queen, after the second move,
all the bees were shaken onto the grass in front of the hive, with the
caged queen on the entrance board. When most bees were in the
hive, the queen was released on the top bars and was immediately
re-accepted. I watched her on the combs for about an hour, and then
installed three deep frames of honey in the hive. She was there at
9am this morning and just fine and at 4pm, when I checked her again,
she had laid eggs. I saw here lay one, as well. What a relief! Anyhow,
tomorrow she travels to my queen apiary near Piet Retief, where her
worker can feast on that most fantastic of flows, Eucalyptus Grandis.

In summary: the balled queen was saved by caging, and effectively
creating a nuc (of her own bees) by moving the hive twice. The latter
manipulations effectively expelled all the agressive field bees. No
specialised equipment was needed beyond the queen cage. Egg
laying has commenced, with the queen having full range of all combs.
Field bees were "sacrified" and the hive was thus installed with plenty
of honey.

As to the reason for the balling, that remains a mystery, but was most
certainly not another scut queen/swarm. Drifting is perhaps the best
guess.

Barry Sergeant
Kyalami
South Africa