A beekeeper checks whether a dark Buckfast queen in a small mating nuc has successfully mated by looking for eggs in the cells. Eggs alone don't prove fertility; the real confirmation comes when they hatch into larvae and get capped as worker brood instead of drone brood.
Let's take a look into our mini mating nuc and see if our queen is mated. Very annoying, they're filling the feeder up with comb. If I take a look at my cell, the virgin has emerged, and it's been long enough now that the queen in here might be mated. So let's get inside and take a look. You can see that feeder full of comb. We have to clear that out, but we've got lots and lots of bees in here. I'm going to take out this frame first and see if we can see our queen. And there we go, one F1 Buckfast queen from a very, very dark Buckfast line. If you take a look down in those cells, you can see we have got eggs, but we still need one more sign before we know she is fully mated, and that is for those eggs there to hatch into larva and then to be capped over to prove that it is worker brood and not drone.
