Swarms-4/10/23 Chaos
Swarms-4/10/23 Chaos
Early this afternoon, the over wintered nuc swarmed again. I got them to go to the same stack of supers as yesterday's swarm, got the queen in a clip and left the receiving nuc on the stack. Later this afternoon, one of my strong hive swarmed. Swarm commander and tanging had no effect. They went high into a tree in my neighbor's yard. About 45 minutes later, they appeared to be returning, but had to pass the nuc with the new swarm. It appears as if about half of the returning bees stopped at that nuc, went in and started fanning. I'm wondering if the original bees will protect the queen or if the queenless swarm will accept her. I'm also wondering if the bees that stay over night will remain with this swarm. About an hour after that, I heard swarm sounds again, but did not see activity from where the large swarm went high. Instead, a small swarm was arriving at the remnants of a hollow log that used to contain bees. I saw a queen with a yellow mark and picked her up. I put her in a clip and got another nuc and placed it on top of the log. Those bees appear to be going into the nuc. These bees came from a different direction than the returning swarm and did not appear to be heading for my bait hive. At least there will be a few nice days to try and figure out what is going on.
Re: Swarms-4/10/23 Chaos
I got my answers. A fair number of bees remained in the hive with the small swarm, but the queen in the clip was killed. I took the bees from that hive and started a newspaper combination into a small swarm nuc that has a laying queen. The very small swarm with the marked queen that I put in a nuc took off for parts unknown. I did not see them leave.