Have just got back from going beekeeping, where we did all sorts of manoevres that we've never done before!
To start with my dad went and picked up a virgin queen from a beekeeping chum, who had pulled the queen out of her cell a little while ago. He brought it back in a cage with two workers, but didn't want to keep the workers with the queen in case their presence encouraged attack from our colony. So we did something completely new to us: we moved the queen into another (worker-free) cage. To do this we set up somthing like those containers that scientists handles radioactive materials or whatever with - a box with places where you can sticks your arms, so you can work with fiddly tweezers etc. without exposing yourself to ionising particles (except that ours was a bit less hi-tech and involved a plastic bag, some rubber gloves, and fiddling about with bees instead of radioactive isotopes).
With our queen in her very own little cage we set up the mechanism that would allow us to dangle her between two frames inside the hive. Again, it was an incredibly hi-tech solution, involving a paperclip and a match stick.
We then drove off to the apiary, all of a flutter and terribly excited. We opened up the hive and slid her down between two frames, where she was held up with the matchstick. We then mucked about with supers for a bit and then we came home.
It's very interesting though. I reckon that there were more bees than there were when we went to check last week, and they were definitely their usual grumpy selves again, rather than the calm, docile, exempliary specimens they had become when they were queenless. Also, they had almost filled up their first super, when last week they were only working on two of the frames! 
This raises two questions:
1. Do they have a new queen?
2. If they do have a new queen, which queen will they choose to sting to death?
3. What sort of honey is it that they are collecting, now that the oil seed rape has finished?
(OK, so that was three questions). Hmmm, interesting........
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