Swarming in Missouri

[Jim H]

Saw two swarms in the past three days, I caught both but the first left after two days. The second took me three attempts. I had to cut the limbs off of three different trees to get them down. Thought I had them on the third try
but when I went to inspect them they were gone. I put them in 5 frame nucs with 2 frames of drawn comb. I am wondering if I'm doing something wrong because the bees don't stay. I think I had the queen both times because the left over bees, from shaking them into the hive tried to get in the nucs. After inspecting the nucs I could see newly drawn comb on one of the frames in each of the hives so I'm assuming they tried to settle down. Something I'm doing must be wrong. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

P.S I caught a swarm that stayed last year using the same technique (using a 5 frame nuc).

Thanks in advance

[TREBOR]

Well I'm still new but you could try to put in a frame of uncapped brood
next time.....
I think that is whats suppose to be done, to make them stay...
others may know better ways
man, it must be cool to have swarms all over, bees for the takin...!

O Ya Welcome aboard..... :D

[Michael Bush]

Sometimes swarms just won't stay no matter what you do.  A few drops of lemograss oil seem to help.  Of course getting the queen helps.  If you can spot her (and usually I can't) you can put her in a cage or make sure she's in the hive and put an excluder on the bottom so the queen can't leave for a few days.  You have to remember to take it off in a few days because if she's from an afterswarm she will be a virgin and have to go out to mate.

[Jim H]

The strangest thing happened this morning. I went out to get my nuc from the back yard and put it away and it had a swarm of bees in it. I think it was the swarm I tried to catch earlier that left. Sure was a great suprize. I'm going out to feed them now. Also, thanks for the info about putting brood in with a new swarm I will try that if I have a chance to catch another swarm.