Till the bees come marching home.........

[IAFF]

Had my strongest hive swarm last Saturday.  Caught the swarm set up new home.  They stayed for two days and then left - ants.  Came home yesterday and the swarm had returned and was going back in the hive.  Has anyone else seen this before?  My local bee guy at Southern States theorized the swarm queen got killed.  Any ideas

[iddee]

Why do you think it was the same swarm. After all, they did leave a smell to attract the next swarm that came along.

[Tommyt]

My local bee guy at Southern States theorized the swarm queen got killed.  Any ideas

No

But If I were you I'd find this queen and cage her for a day or 3 :-D


Good luck
Tommyt

[L Daxon]

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URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/94/swarm007.jpg/][/URL]

I had a similar thing happen this morning.  I watched a swarm leave my biggest hive and land about 30-40 ft. up in my neighbors big maple tree.  As i kept watching, within a few minutes I noticed bees began to congregate on the outside of my hive.  Within a few minutes there were no more bees up in the tree but the outside of my swarm hive was covered with bees.  I assumed they had just come back.

After they settled down a bit I got a new hive body and brushed the bees into the box.  Then I put 2 frames of brood from the old hive into the new body in the hopes they would stay.  Don't have a clue if I got a queen or not but thought they might try and raise one.

I had another hive swarm about 2 weeks ago.  Caught it right away in a blue atlas cedar near the hive.  I hived that swarm and was very sad to check the next morning and they were totally gone.