Well it's been over 10 days since I put the new queen in the daughter hive. They have taken to each other and there is at lease one frame of eggs and new brood now. There also appeared to be several queen cells, but they looked unused, so I suppose they are old cells (off the frame of eggs I transferred) that were being formed while the hive was queenless. Anyway, introducing the new queen appears to have been successful and things are beginning to get back to normal. I didn't see the queen (and I can't remember if she is marked!), but the sight of eggs was good enough for me. Some foundation was being drawn out and this is good too, but they have a long way to go yet.
The Parent hive remains bursting with bees and burr comb. No swarm cells that I could see, but as with the daughter there was brood, and I think eggs! So the queen is OK. There also appears to be the start of some work drawing out foundation on the remaining hive frames and also on the supers. Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) the workers have made honey comb off the side of one of the supers, thereby avoiding the plastic foundation. This is particularly annoying as they had built nearly a whole frame's worth of comb which I had to remove. I hope they will start to use the plastic foundation soon. It's been about 2 weeks since I removed the queen excluder!
It's been a bit of a mixed blessing today. Good that the queens are doing well, not so good that their building has not been very productive and off the foundation. I'm not happy with the plastic foundation - the bees do not seem to like it this year, and I wonder if I will use this again.
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