All Hail Queen Sally

Carnage outside the bee city was piling up this morning. There were several queen carcasses on the patio and probably more scattered away from the hive. All together we counted around 16 queen cells, which means 15 queens-to-be did not make it.
We think this little lady was the victor and is now the new queen. Alden named her Sally... yep. Ilana and Alden saw her clinging to the side of the hive for about 15 minutes this morning before she took off on what we assume was her mating flight.

We did not see her return, but will know if everything happened as it should in a couple days if we see baby bees again in the hive.

Some of the workers in the video above are trying to help Sally find her way back to the hive by fanning the nasonov pheromone out into the air.
We collected a few of the vanquished queens for a posthumous photo shoot. RIP little lasses. It was amazing to see just how much smaller the virgin queens are than mated queens. The queen's abdomen really expands dramatically once it's filled with sperm and eggs.