At the beginning of May, I split our overwintered hive. I did an equal split, walkaway - which means I divided the hive in half into two new hives [One frame for this, one frame for that - dealing the frames like cards] The Tardis had the old queen, which means the lang had to make a new one. The lang started with 3 frames of brood and a lot of field bees. I checked on things a couple of weeks later and gave them another frame of brood, just in case.
I checked them again last week and lo, and behold, I found a hive with 4 frames of good brood: eggs and larvae at all stages. This means a queen! And then I found her. Large and very golden. She's in the center of this pic.
Bonus: These bees are very calm. They only got disturbed when I took this frame out of the hive. The rest of the time they were very calm.
She's got a good laying pattern for a new queen and here's hoping they make us a lot of honey.
