Uncertainty, then hope

I gave the bees a little more time between inspections, as I wanted to be sure the putative queens had enough time to mate and lay. Luckily the weather had been beautiful (with the exception of the beginning of this week), so I had hopes both colonies would have laying queens.

As so often, I started with the Moon. Two supers are almost full, but the third one looks very empty. I re-arranged frames in the second super, to try to persuade the bees to fill out all combs with honey, so that it's easier to harvest, when the time comes (soon, soon!). When I got down to the brood box I was once again astonished, that the number of bees does not seem to have declined. There must be an element of drift from the Star to the Moon.

Moon still busy!

Working my way through the frames, I was pleased to see eggs! Not many yet (so the queen must be fairly newly mated), but eggs nonetheless. The Moon is saved (if the bees don't go off and kill her...). As I progressed through the inspection, I had the luck to actually see the queen: quite a tawny one. And, no: I did not try and mark her, but left her in peace to get on with laying.

The Star super is devoid of any noteworthy stores, so I think I'll draw a blank on that one honey-harvest-wise.
The brood box was quieter than the Moon, but had three sides of well-laid out brood. So the Star has a queen, too, who is busy laying. She must have mated about a week before the Moon queen, because some of the brood was capped.
Funnily enough, although I saw drones in the Star, there were none (or no conspicuous ones) in the Moon.
Another weird thing was that although the Star had brood (eggs, larvae and pupae), there was a closed queen cell. I think it's the same one that was there last inspection. Grown cautious through this year, I left it untouched, as I don't know what I might trigger if I remove it. I am not sure whether it is a developing queen or simply a monument to the bees' wishful thinking and hankering for a monarch. Somehow, I think it's the latter.

The same photo - but is it the same cell?