At times (although rare) young queens lay strange at first like you describe. I would give her a week before using the hive tool. My source is a beekeeper which worked for me and had also worked caging queens for a large queen producer. He said the problem might be more common than we think but the bees correct her first mistakes. Protein! Six eggs in a cell would make a good cover shot for a bee magazine! Bob -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************