When I added a super to Colony 12 yesterday I discovered a problem -- presumably another one of my mistakes.
Last season I fed them and left an extra super on the hive over winter. I put it above a Queen excluder. Yesterday I opened the hive to put another super on and found that there were Drones above the excluder. Somehow the Queen had made her way into the super before I put it together.in
I moved the excluder above last the super which I put in last year. That will allow the Drones to hatch and move down through the hive. It'll take a while for the colony to sort itself out now. She has presumably been restricted for space.
I'm wondering whether I can encourage the Queen to move down to the brood box. Even if I do there will be Drones which need to be removed from the super later on. It's a mini-mess.