weird occurance and questions!?

[wildbeekeeper]

So maybe some of you can shed some light on this:

I did a cutout this morning and brought the bees home and since I had to run for another appointment, I put the bees in the shade (they were in a hive body from the bee vac of Robo's design, so they were closed up but had the open ventilation screen on top to avoid overheating) and left.  I came back an hour later and there was a large handful of bees clustered on the screen of the bee vac hive and a strong aroma of alarm pheremone.  I took a closer look and saw a ball of bees so I blew some air on them and low and behold there was a queen in there.  They werent balling her, they were huddled around her like she was there own.... now keep in mind these bees are OUTSIDE the screen.  THe bees inside were buzzing loudly and there were many dead bees on the outside of the screen and numerous bees trying to fight through the screen.  Im not sure if there was a queen in the colony I extracted, but I did see two hatched queen cells and I know they swarmed about 3 to 5 days ago, so Im sure there is/was a virgin queen but not sure if  got her....

anyway, where would these bees have come from and why did they do what they did with the bees in the bee vac?  I have several queen right nucs in the yard and a queen castle with a few virgin queens.....not sure if they were the source or not?   just cant figure out where the queen came from with that large handful of bees and why they landed on the beevac full of bees!?  Any thoughts would be appreciated!

[riverrat]

anytime I have done a cut out I don't end up with 100 percent of the bees in the vac. My guess she ended up in the back of your truck on or near the bee vac. and made it to the house.

[iddee]

#1... What rat said....

#2... The vac was giving off "here we are" pheromone and a returning queen from a mating flight followed the scent.