The queen

A beekeeper from my group asked if anyone could spare a queen, as they had lost theirs. As I had too many hives to take through the winter, I said if they could help me find her, they could have a queen, and I would unite the queenless bees with another colony, so effectively reducing the number of hives.
Finding the queen amongst thirty thousand other bees is not the easiest of tasks…
But with three of us looking we did spot her, and managed to get her into a travelling cage with a couple of bees to look after her. 
Not a good photo, but you can see she’s quite a bit bigger than the worker bees, and much brighter looking.
I do hope she successfully moves into her new home, there’s always some luck needed as the new colony may not like the smell of her! She will not be just let loose to take her chances, but will stay in the cage with her aides for several days until they eat their way out through the block of sugar. By then, hopefully the new colony will have adopted her.
I await news!