I did a large removal last saturday and used a bee vacuum ( ROBO Vac Design ) to remove most of the bees. Tward the end of the job I found the queen and trapped her in a queen catcher. I placed her in a nuc and left the nuc at the location until dark. The next day I moved the bees to their new location and reintroduced the vacumed bees to their brood and their queen. After leaving the brood boxes on top of the Robo vac for over an hour I removed them and placed them on their bottom board and placed a cover on them. I placed the vacuum box with the remaining bees next to the entrance of their new hive thinking they would smell their queen and start moving in. To my surprise the remaining bees (a lot of them) took flight and landed on another smaller hive about 20 feet away. I checked on then the next day and it appears that they are still there, bearding on the front of the hive. My question is, should I assume that those bees will be joining that colony. Did they move there because they smelled the pheromones of that queen instead of their own?
Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.
-MC
Yes, they will move into another hive. Sometimes they will move out of a well established small hive into one that think has a better queen or they will take their queen and take over another hive.
Jim