Dispatched Queen

Thats dispatched as in shipped, not dispatched as in terminated...

The queen that was maturing in the nuc has grown up big and strong and is laying like only a queen bee can. In a previous post I mentioned I wasn't sure that I'd use her in a hive. My concern was that she was quite small and maybe I had grafted a grub that was older than ideal or that the bees hadn't done a very good job of raising her. The other idea I floated was that maybe she hadn't mated or wasn't yet laying. In the photo on the left you can see that her wings are almost, but not quite, as long as her thorax. The photo to the right shows her two weeks later.

Her thorax extends well past her wings and she looks very golden. There is also plenty of brood (at least one full frame). The brood in the previous photo is brood that hadn't quite hatched when I took the frames out of the parent hive and put them in the nuc.

I posted a question to the bee keepers club website about mailing queens and what the best way to go about it was. I received no response so I packaged her, and her servants, in their cage. Placed the cage in a light bulb box I had floating around and filled the void with some bubble wrap. I wanted to send her in a relatively large box so that there was less chance of her overheating or suffocating.

You can't see much in this photo, but she is in the cage with 5 workers. I made a candy by mixing icing sugar with honey until it as 'dry' and pliable. It has to be quite dry as you don't want the bees wings to stick to it.
On a previous attempt to transfer a queen from one hive to another I used icing sugar and water to make the candy. When I open the hive two weeks later to see how she was going I found her shriveled up and dead still in the cage. I guess the bees didn't recognise the candy as food so didn't remove the plug in the end of the cage.
I left this cage in the hot water cupboard overnight, before mailing it, and were bits of candy under the cage, indicating the bees were chewing on it already so hopefully the host hive will clear the plug this time.

I'm still waiting to hear what condition the queen is in as I don't think she'll arrive at her destination until tomorrow. Here's hoping she's all good....