Ok, so after moving my hives back from soy beans I had one hive swarm. I was able to catch them and put them in another hive. They stayed there for two days and swarmed again. I caught them again and left them where I got them. While this is going on I was doing some open feeding with just 1:1 syrup in a 5 gallon bucket.
After catching the swarm the second time I went to check out how much feed was left and noticed a queen running around inside the buck, (the bees had consumed all the syrup) It took a little bit but I captured her and put her in a queen cage with some bees that were following her.
Now that evening I went back to the swarm because I thought I would have a better chance at catching the queen since hopefully they would all have settled down. Well they were gone.
My question is where did this queen come from? Could she have been the queen from the swarm? She is a big girl so I'm going to guess she has been laying eggs some where recently, heck she could barely fly.
If nothing else I found this interesting and wanted to share it with y'all.
Who knows? Swarms can have more than one queen. Record I believe is 21 in one swarm.
...JP
this is just odd, I went out this morning and found the "lost" swarm on the same tree just above the hive I had them in. I looked through them and could not find a queen. I then went back in the house and retrived the queen I caught last night. I had her in a queen cage and placed her on the top bars of the hive with the lid off. I then removed a few handfuls of bees from the swarm and the "ran" to her and seemed very excited to see her. With in 5-7 minutes all the bees had left the tree and were in the hive.
Now what do I do to get them to stay?
I keep hearing that the girls do not read the same books as us, I guess they are trying to teach me something new.
you can leave her caged for a couple of days, or better, put a queen excluder between the bottom box and bottom board. you could also try a frame of brood from another hive, i you have one to spare. i have found that feeding seems to help settle them, but the truth is, if they want to leave...they will.
if you can get them to stay for a couple of days and she starts laying, that's usually all it takes.
I always put an excluder on the bottom board with swarms and leave it for at least a week.
cheers
Steve
Steve I'm going to try that this time. I did attempt the excluder before, but the queens had lost enough weight to slip through the excluder. This one is still pretty plump so I think it will hold her in.