I have often heard the old adage that when looking for a queen you must assume she could be anywhere in the hive.  And this is certainly true - in my experience
she can be found on the hive walls, on the inner cover, on frames of honey, but almost all the time she's on a frame of young brood.  Today, however, I was
cleaning out an old dead-out hive from winter.  It was really dead, with moldy bees packed everywhere, and no signs of life.  When I started, I tossed the inner
cover (with stored queen excluder stuck on top) onto the ground.  Following cleaning, I went to pick this up when I noticed a queen plus one single worker
together between inner cover and excluder!

I retrieved her and put her in an old queen cage and banked her along with the new queens I bought this spring.  I'm going to try to introduce her into a nuc just to
see what happens.

I am amazed at this.  How could a single bee, and especially a queen, survive in a hive where the colony is long dead?  It is much too early for queen production
and swarming in my area, so she couldn't be a lost virgin (she certainly did not look like a virgin, although she was obvioiusly not in laying condition).  Has
anyone else ever seen anything like this?

Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA