mystery queen

[bailey]

had a weird occurrence today as i was sitting in the bee yard observing the girls i happen to notice an extra fat bee walking along the bottom board of a hive about 15 feet away from me, i was talking to JP at the time ( exchanging ideas ) and i walked over to look closer.
i had to interrupt the conversation with JP to tell my wife to run inside to grab the queen catcher because there on the hive rack was the prettiest looking queen just wandering around the end hive with not one worker bee escorting her!  as i waited for my wife to return with the queen catcher i got to watch the queen walk around, stop to clean her legs and walk around some more and then just stop.

i gently got her with the queen catcher and looked her over pretty good, she had a very long abdomen but was not an overly fat queen, she had a fuzzy thorax and a little ( very little ) fuzz on her abdomen.

i placed her in a queen cage with a thin candy plug in it and placed her in the shade while i went through the hive she had been walking on.
i found that hives queen and she had been laying like a beast! caped brood and eggs everywhere!
no sign of any queen cell in the hive so i have no idea where she came from.
i quickly made a nuke with a few frames of capped and open brood from another hive and placed the caged mystery queen in there with them. will check her tomorrow to see if they have eaten the plug out.



anyone ever see something like this before?  it,s a first for me!
bailey

[RayMarler]

Yep, I've seen queens in weird places before too.
Found one crawling on the ground in next to a hive, it was her hive and I had not been inspecting that hive.
Found one on the lid of the hive next to her own, after I had been inspecting hers.
Found one on my shirt sleeve after inspecting her hive.
Found one two hours after inspecting her hive, on the ground in front of her hive with her court of nurse bees, lifted her up and put her on her hive front board and she walked right in.
Found one on my table beside the shed where I keep my beeworking tools. She must have been ejected out of a hive. I added some bees to her but they ignored her, she died.