I have not had many swarms in the fall but here is one for this fall.
Saw a lot of bees in the air today around 4 PM and saw them starting to gather around a rosemary bush that is about 20 feet in front of about 4 hives.
I saw them starting to land on a roasemary bush branch by the time I got the camera they looked like this:
The hives are in the third week of Apiguard, I think I would have absconded before now if I had to live with that stuff.
With all of those bees in the air I could not figure out which hive they came from, you think it would have been easy.
I will check the hives the next few days and see what I can see.
It may not be an abscond/suicide swarm from your hive. It may be one that was attracted by the smell of your hives. I had a small swarm show up over my bees late in the afternoon about 3 weeks ago. I retrieved it from the fig bush in the back of my yard. The queen was unmarked. I only have 1 unmarked queen among my bees at the house, and having just seen her that day, can say with certainty, this queen was not the same.
I put the swarm in a 5 frame deep nuc, and after seeing that the queen was laying, boosted the hive with a frame of brood. I marked her with silver paint (age unknown) a week ago, and plan to evaluate the laying pattern today. It will be a real challenge to overwinter this nuc, but if I can use it for 2 October bee presentations and not disturb/disrupt my functioning hives, I will be happy.
They are not absconding they are just small swarms.
Here is a picture of one today making the third that I have found this fall. I have all three in medium frame size nuc boxes and they are collecting / taking, nectar / syrup and storing it in the drawn frames. I was going to check one of the swarms for eggs yesterday but robbers moved in pretty fast so I just closed them up and will check another day. Maybe its the warm spring like weather encouraging the swarms.
