Hello everyone, I am really stumped with this one and was wondering if someone out there might know the answer. At the end of June I bought a number of Apidea mini-nucs (small polysterene mating nuclei), fitted the frames with foundation and filled the candy box with candy. I also stocked them with a cupful of young nurse-bees in accordance with the manufacturers instructions. I was then unable to get back to the apiary for some weeks (due to illness) and assumed that the effort had been wasted. Well, I visited the apiary yesterday and most of the mini-nucs had been robbed of their stores much as I had expected. The thing that really suprised me, however, was that one of them had a sealed queen cell in it and was well stocked with bees and comb filled with honey. I have absolutely no idea how this can be since they have not had access to a queen for at least a month and there are no other eggs in the mini-nuc. Where did they get the egg to make a queen-cell? According to my queen rearing timetable; it takes 3 days for an egg to hatch, 6 days in the larval stage, and then the queen cell is capped for another 6 days during which time it grows from a pre-pupa to a pupa. Consequently, the bees in this mini-nuc must have had access to an egg within the last 9 - 15 days but I do not see how. The only way that I can think that they might have got an egg is that they "stole" it from another colony in much the same way that ants steal eggs from rival colonies. Does anyone have any experience, or opinion, of this? I have left the mini-nuc as I found it so I may yet get a queen emerge from it. -- Paul Walton [log in to unmask] Toddington, Bedfordshire, England. Tel. +44 (0)1525 875570