Hello
You are all correct. I found the queen then lost her!!!
She was on about the 4th frame I looked at. Neil, I thought about not inspecting consecutive frames also, and it did make it much faster. There was a fair gap down the bottom of the frame. I saw her about 3 times but could not catch her as she would go onto the other side of the frame. I took the frame a short distance into the shed and started tipping off a few bees at a time into a plastic box as there were many bees on the frame. I was watching all the time and she was not among these. I got to the end of the frame and no queen. This is a hive, mind you, that I smoked very well after I lifted the honey super, and they stung me at once 3 times on the hand holding the smoker. I wore gloves after that. They were wild.
I didn't know what to do..I looked through the brood frames again and sealed the hive. All I can think is she escaped somehow into the shed.
I do not want to risk losing the new queen, as good ones are hard to get around here. So to be certain, I might have to make up a new hive tomorrow with the bought queen. It doesn't solve the problem of the aggressive hive, though. I might have to take egg frames from the hive I usually split, because if there is no queen and they requeen themselves from the existing brood, I tell you they will kill me!
This hive has a natural angry roar, and I don't think I can tell the difference between that and a queenless roar. But I don't think the queen will have got back into the hive...I just wish I knew what happened.
The second mystery is that I found 5 or 6 queen cells, a couple of them capped, but they only contained royal jelly and no larvae. Does anyone have an explanation for this?
Lone the world's worst queen catcher.
:'(