I went to split a hive today that was crowded and about to swarm I'm sure (there were 5+ swarm cells). I read up about a flying split so went in search of the queen. 2 supers in I found her, much lighter in color than I remembered, but I set the frame aside. I decided to finish looking just in case she was a newly hatched queen, though she wasn't small and skiddish as I have experienced with virgin queens before. 2 frames later I found another queen, much darker and more slender (the one I thought was in there).
So here I have two queens, I couldnt find any queen cells that had recently hatched, and both were moving calmly about the hive.
I went ahead and did my flying split with the dark queen. Then returned to the nuc to watch the other queen to see if I could watch her lay. After a bit of watching I witnessed the queen on the bottom bar opening her tail end and the the nurse bees smelling?? (it appeared) maybe releasing pheromone, but then an eggs came out, right on the wood and the nurse bees quickly ate it!
I think I have heard of this before somewhere but I can't remember where. Is this normal, or a bad sign?