What to do with swarm?

[bzzigi]

Last Sunday I caught a swarm which came out from one of my hives. I put it in a skep as I didn't have any other hives. On Tuesday I moved the bees to 5-frames nuc and add 2 frames of honey and half of bag of fondant. Yesterday (Saturday) I saw most of the bees outside of the nuc, precisely UNDER it (there was some space between the nuc and stand). They moved in and out of the hive, but most of them were outside. They even made two small combs, around 8 cm in diameter.
What does this mean? I didn't see the queen so I am not sure if she is there. Does this behavior mean that queen is surely there?

Another question is what to do with this swarm. The hive they came from is now very weak, with enough honey and pollen, but no brood and lot of drones. There are queen cells there, but I am not sure if there is a queen.
Now I'm thinking about joining these two hives, ie. returning the swarm back to it's original hive. I believe that that way they would have much better chances. The other option is to re-queen the original hive and hope that they will have enough time to become stronger.
Can I join these two hives? How to decide?

[Finski]

.
If you put the swarm back, they swarm again.


Make a small hive from swarm. Handle it with mite controller like 3% oxalic acid water or trickle with oxalic acid+sugar + water.

get a new laying queen and change the bad one.

When new queen is laying, the old hive has theny emerged virgin. Take it away and join with that
new queen hive.

[Michael Bush]

>The hive they came from is now very weak, with enough honey and pollen, but no brood and lot of drones.

That would indicate to me either you were feeding constantly or they swarmed and afterswarmed to get to that condition.

> There are queen cells there, but I am not sure if there is a queen.

Probably won't be a laying queen for another 24 to 30 days.

As Finski says, they will just swarm again of you put them back now.  Maybe after the main flow is in swing you could get by combining them without them swarming again.

[Brian D. Bray]

>The hive they came from is now very weak, with enough honey and pollen, but no brood and lot of drones.

That would indicate to me either you were feeding constantly or they swarmed and afterswarmed to get to that condition.

> There are queen cells there, but I am not sure if there is a queen.

Probably won't be a laying queen for another 24 to 30 days.

As Finski says, they will just swarm again of you put them back now.  Maybe after the main flow is in swing you could get by combining them without them swarming again.

Over feeding is the most common mistake beekeepers make.

[bzzigi]

Guys, thanks for your answers.

In my case it wasn't overfeedeing (believe me or not  ;) ). The main pasture finished about 2 weks ago and there was really no need for feeding them.  It was actually an afterswarm. I didn't see the first swarm, neither opened the hive in a week before the second swarm, but I noticed that, before they swarmed again, there were less bees in front of the hive compared to weeks before and my other hives.

Nevertheless, I checked yesterday and both hives are fine. The old one has a new queen and there are eggs in the nuc (hopefully not a laying worker but in that case they wouldn't build a new comb, right?). I believe that they are now progressing well and there won't bee any need to join them.