Hello All!
 
Here in north-central Alabama the bees  are in rapid buildup due to a
warm winter and early spring, and in my opinion about 3 to 4 weeks
ahead their normal status .   A lot of pollen and a surprising
amount of nector is coming in.  Three of my six colonies run with a
standard Langstroth, queen excluder (even in winter  ---don't scold
for
this, for in this climate they seldom run short of food in the brood
box and I watch them carefully, in the backyard), and a single shallow
super.   The other
three carry two shallow supers.  Normally, I super  them for the flow
the last
few days of March, or the first few of February.  This situation has
been developing for  2+ weeks,  at which time all colonies had a
minimum
of 7 frames of brood.  I examined them all yesterday, rather expecting
 to find one or more of them approaching swarm mode.
Opening what I believed to be the largest first, the  inner cover had
a cup full of bees on its UPPER surface, and the single super was FULL
of bees, as discovered on pulling a couple of frames in the center.
 
The surprise here was a swarm cell on the side of a central bottom
bar, containing a generous quarter inch of royal jelly, and an
estimated hatch plus18-20 hour larva perfectly placed.  Remember, a
queen
excluder is in place.  I am an experienced amateur beekeeper, graft
and raise  successfully most of my own queens.  The size of this larva
was exactly as I would pick as for grafting.   The only problem was
that
it had a slight tan 'cast', that frankly suggested it might have been
dead for 24 hours, and the amount of royal jelly appeared to me to be
more than will have been placed under most grafted larva in the first
18-24
hours.  I here make two points:  1.  There were no eggs in other cells
in this super although there were plenty of cells available in the
super's center where brood would have been placed, if the queen had
slipped up thru the excluder.  This was not the case.  Further,  in
the
brood box  were 8 and 1/2 frames of brood in all stages, including
sheets of eggs, all stages of larvae, and capped brood - both worker
and
drone---.. and lastly, there was not a single queen cell  in the
entire brood
box except a couple of very ancient  ones with no eggs, nor larva.
 
I've never heard of this occurence before, and can not exactly explain
it to my satisfaction.    Possible explanation might go this way;  I
for  one believe even
queenright colonies often have a few laying workers, one of which here
put
an egg in that queen cell found that developed to the point found,
then
'aborted', if you will.  My impression is that it has been
reported that laying workers have a high incidance of reproductive
failure and this accounts for much of the usual spotty pattern even in
raising drones.
Is it possible that the queen could have  managed to get an egg up
into
this cell WITHOUT herself having gone thru the  excluder?   I have
never
bought the idea of a worker carrying an egg or larva from one place to
another
 (hive to hive, or one part of the hive to another)
 
Has anyone ever seen  something like; this?   How about  a suggestion,
or make a comment.  This isn't earth shaking, but is rather
interesting to  me.
Thanks in advance!
 
Bob Barnett
Birmingham, Ala  (southeast USA)