Royal Dilemma

[KONASDAD]

Yesterday while doing yard work, I noticed a small group of bees clustered on the ground about 12ft from my hive. I looked closer and saw a queen on th4 bottom. This hive has been making and destroying queen cells the last three weeks. Even though I kept giving them more frames to draw, I thought they were going to swarm despite my efforts. I thought this was the begining of that swarm. I grabbed a deep nuc, sprayed w/ sugra and hbh and put queen on landing board. W/in an hour i realize thgis is is not a swarm. I look more closely at queen and she has a broken left wing. Almost looks DWV kinda wing. I take queen andf keep for posterity. I inspect hive, find loads of capped brood, honey, no significant showing of mites as i sugar shaked recently. Cant find eggs, lots of capped cells, some larvae, Some queen cells both in swarm and supercedure positions. I find about five in total, but did not pull all twenty frames, or inspect burr comb for queen cells as they were being scraped no matter what. I closed up hive, shower up for evening out and am sitting at dining room table w/ door open. A big bee flies in and lands on Kona, my dog. My wife says, its a huge bee, its a queen. I say, " probably a drone, they're monstrous sized this year." I get up before Kona tap dances on its skull and see a queen! Now I have no idea where this queen is from. I can tell you I never see feral bees here. I take this queen, spray w/ sugar water and HBH, go to aforementioned hive, and place on landing board and spray vigourously w/ sgar HBH spray the whole landing board. They clustered on her, but not overly aggressively. About five minutes later she was shuffled into hive by bees. Didn't seem like a royal reception, but not a bad one either. So where did I go Wrong or right?

[Understudy]

The queen on the ground with the broken wing was mostlikely the queen from the swarm. A swarm throws out it's old queen.

The bee that landed on Kona may have been a virgin queen returning from a mating flight.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[AllanJ]

The fact that they let her in is a good sign. I read recently that if a queen tries to enter a queenrite hive, the workers will not kill her, but hold her in place until she dies of starvation.

[doak]

I did see the workers kill a virgin queen once. There were about 20 cells in the hive.
Queened out 5 nucs with them. All didn't hatch.
doak

[KONASDAD]

The population in this hive appears to be the same in numbers. My thinking was while preparing to swarm , I induced them to delay by ULBC techniques, Somewhere, this queen got hurt, and they kicked her out after some cells hatched. The next question, If I am correct, Will they now throw a real swarm since they were planning on doiung so? or have they swarmed in their minds?

[doak]

I did not attend that class.
doak

[thegolfpsycho]

I've never heard of a swarm throwing out the old queen.  Never heard of them holding her in place either.  But I have seen numerous queens being balled.  The old queen leaves with the swarm, unless she is unable to.  In that case, the swarm will often wait for one of the emerging virgins and then leave with her.  In a supercedure, the old queen is displaced and sometimes may be seen laying side by side with her replacement.  Eventually, the old queen dissappears.  Maybe they superceded her and ran her off.  Maybe she is damaged from a battle with the heir apparent.  There is a point that you can head off a swarm by creating an artificial one.  Creating a new hive, adding room, and allowing them to raise the queen cells.  But usually, once they have crossed that point, there is no stopping them.  You may be in a "let nature run it's course" situation now because if both queens are back in the same hive, a battle may ensue and leave you queenless, or a swarm may issue.  I would probably watch them for a day or 2 before I dug back in there.