confused by queen activity

Started by brolib, May 26, 2014, 06:11:55 PM

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brolib

Greetings,
I'm really new at beekeeping. Got a couple of hives and packages late April of this year and everything seemed to be going along smoothly. One hive appeared a bit weaker than the other so the stronger hive "donated" a frame of brood to the weaker, then added another deep body on both hives. That was 4-5 days ago. Looked in on them this afternoon and there was a small "beard" of bees hanging down from the entrance. I looked through the hanging bees and didn't see a queen. Removed the outer and inner cover to check for drawn comb. There was hardly any. Thought I'd give the bees on the inner a cover a quick look and there was a queen! I grabbed an empty hive I got in case a swarm needed a home and placed it upwind about 10 feet with some lemon grass oil inside hoping to attract a swarm leaving the hive.
What in the world was a queen doing at the top of a deep super that has no comb? Should I capture her and put her in the new hive along with some brood, assuming that she's a supercedure queen? I've never seen half this much traffic at the entrance of this hive. Any ideas on what's going on would be appreciated.

GSF

They may be fixing to go look for another place. They say packages will do that some times. Is this one of them that has a frame of brood donated to them?
If not then you may want to donate one as an anchor. Could be that the queen isn't mated.
When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you - then you know your nation is doomed.