Addendum to today's blog

Kathy Niven wrote back and pointed out what should have been obvious.  If I don't want to take a chance on losing the original queen, I should remove the other queen cells.  So, just now, I hopped into my bee suit and opened the hive.  I thought I remembered which frame I had just placed.  (Another obvious idea:  mark the frames that are special.)  On that frame I saw a queen that looked like the one always there- fat and golden.  There were no queen cells at all.  So I looked at all the frames- no queen cells.  So the workers had already dismantled the cells, which must have been empty.  I can't know if they hatched, hatched and were killed, killed before hatching or hatched and alive, either not being seen or out of the hive mating.  Only time will tell.