The one the got away

This is a follow-up on my previous post about the swarm in the bait hive.  It seemed at the time that there may have been two swarms on the same morning.  The one that arrived in the bait hive is nicely settled in and has been doing well.  Today, 12 days later, there are six frames of brood and, as there were already three only five days after they arrived, they obviously came with a mature laying queen, ie they weren't from my hive.

I also looked in my hive that may have swarmed.  There are noticeably fewer bees so I think they have gone. There were already lots of drones and it now seems as though half the bees in the hive are drones.  When checking through 20 days ago, a week after a split, I found 37 queen cells and removed 36, remarking at the time that there is always the nagging fear that there might have been 38.  Today I found the beautiful cell that I had chosen to leave.

I carried on checking and right at the end of the frames, two clear of where any other brood had been I found this.

I think this must have been another queen cell and it doesn't look good.  It isn't even raised from worker brood.  I think the queen I had chosen went off with most of the bees and all that was left was a pretty second-rate queen cell.  The chance of a good quality queen having come from this is small.  I feel a bit hard done by - I suspect I may not even have checked this frame carefully as it didn't contain brood.  A lesson worth learning.

I suppose all is not lost as I don't know the age of this cell.  It is 12 days since the swarms but this could have been a younger cell and there may yet turn out to be a laying queen.  I'll leave it a couple of weeks before having another look.  If there is no queen at least these bees are next to the new swarm so it will be easy to unite them.  Or I could give them some eggs from next door and let them have another go.  We'll see.