One and a half queens

So, I have been on holiday and it has been two weeks since I performed the hive split for the experimental two queen kTBH.
http://augustcottageapiary.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/the-best-laid-schemes-o-bees-an-beeks/

http://augustcottageapiary.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/much-and-more-or-a-mixed-bag/

So first things first, I inspected the hive (now two hives) on Saturday morning,
My wife was decidedly unimpressed as we had somewhere we needed to be but I wanted to get in there and see if everything was ok.

There was a cloud of bees surrounding the hive enjoying some much needed good weather. I inspected the left side of the hive first (my daughter Skyla's side). It was quickly obvious that this was the side the queen ended up in. This is a little unfortunate as this was the side in which I placed the queen cell. Thankfully, they had torn the cell down so the realm of "Phoebee" is still intact. They had certainly kept busy whilst I was on holiday with three more bars of comb full of brood and honey were built out. The right-hand side (my foster son Kyle's side) had also been busy. In the absence of a laying queen they didn't have much brood to look after so they were just making honey. There was some capped drone brood in place (as they take longest to hatch) and there was one beautiful capped queen cell waiting for me on one of the comb edges. So with any luck she will hatch and mate soon. The main concern I have here is that she enter the wrong end of the hive on her return from mating and fight the old queen. I did have something of a boo-boo in that the hive. It had been working so hard making honey I found one comb built out to two inches thick (maybe more). In trying to handle it I managed to break it and had to remove the comb to stop all the honey leaking into the hive.

Only the very top was capped off so this was my very first (accidental) honey harvest. The bottom part of the comb I squeezed out and have left near the hive for the bees to have back.

   

I suspect the honey to be predominantly oil seed rape (canola) honey because:
a) Its light colour.
b) Its taste.
c) The fact that the hive is less than 100yds from 30 acres of it.

That fact that I found a capped queen cell and it is 14 days since the split says to me they made this queen from either an egg or a day old larva (if my bee math is right). Queens emerge on roughly the sixteeth day so that is ...eh... Today! Happy Birthday Princess "Thumbee'lina" (Kyle's name for the new queen to be) here's hoping your reign goes well.