One of my beekeeping colleagues has written to me describing the situation he
found in one of his hives, asking for opinions.

When examining a relatively modest sized colony, he found the original queen
and a supersedure queen laying on the adjacent frame. Not particularly
unusual, but worth noting. However, later in the same brood box he found a
third laying queen, and going back through the frames to check, he found a
virgin queen as well. He had assistants who witnessed this.

Out of curiosity, he divided up the hive into nuclei, giving each one queen,
so that he could make sure that his observations were accurate, and they
were. He had found three mated queens laying simultaneously, and one virgin,
all coexisting amicably.

Conventional wisdom says that you will have mother and supersedure daughter
laying together. Has anyone else seen anything like the above? Or got any
observations/

Matthew Allan