Hello All While working with another beekeeper recently, I came across what to me at any rate, was a remarkable situation. The hive consisted of a single brood chamber, a queen excluder and three supers. We were carrying out routine swarm control - the hive had built queen cells as at our last visit and we had cut them all out. We could not find the queen in the brood chamber and we could find no eggs or young larvae there either. We thus concluded that if she were in the hive that she had somehow got past the queen excluder, which turned out to be correct. Detailed examination of the queen excluder revealed no obvious weakness in it. We then searched the supers which at this stage had a lot of eggs and brood in all stages and sure enough my eagle eyed friend found her. The queen was what he considered to be of normal size which deepened the problem as to how she got past the excluder. He then decided to remove the queen from the hive (I used her in a queenless hive), and cut out all sealed queen cells, leaving unsealed cells. The plan then was to return in 7 days and cut out all sealed queen cells except one. (This is my friend's standard approach). When I returned in 7 days, I found an unsealed queen cell in the brood chamber, a location where there was absolutely no evidence of queen activity on the previous visit. Two questions arise in my mind as a result of these examinations. 1. How did the queen get above the excluder?. 2. How did an egg appear in the brood chamber after we had removed the queen when we were satisfied that there were no eggs in the brood chamber?. My friend opined that the bees sometimes transport eggs from one box to another. I have never before heard of this nor have I come across it in anything I have read. A possible answer to 1. above is that the queen somehow slipped into a super during a previous examination. I was told by an experienced beekeeper to always examine the underside of the queen excluder as soon as I remove it to ensure that the queen is not on it and this I always do. (Of course I could have missed her and she would then be outside the brood chamber.) But no. 2. above is to me, a total mystery. Any light which can be shed on the above would be most appreciated. Sincerely Tom Barrett 49 South Park, Foxrock Dublin 18 Ireland Tel + 353 1 289 5269 Fax + 353 1 289 9940