As I wrote in my previous post, it appears that one of my colonies may be about to swarm. It’s so stuffed with bees that there’s no chance of finding the queen easily, so I really need to deal with the situation without doing so.
At the moment I’m thinking that I’ll move the existing box a little to one side, put a new floor and brood box in its place and then transfer one of the frames of brood into it, backfilling with either foundation or drawn comb. That one frame left on the original site should have no queen cells on. I’ll then move the original box to the other end of the apiary.
The flying bees in the original box should gradually shift back to their original site where brood will emerge over the next week. Younger bees will stay put and orientate to the new position of the hive as they leave. Whichever doesn’t have a queen will produce queen cells. The other should contain eggs and probably won’t have queen cells any more, if it ever did. I think I just need to tear down all but one of the queen cells and leave them for a while to get on with things.