Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Around 6:30pm I saw a small and indecisive swarm in my back yard. I could not see if it came from one of my hives, but it looked like the bees were going between a fig bush at the back of my yard and around a strong hive. When the swarm clustered, it was between baseball and softball size, about 6 feet off the ground. I took a frame of old brood comb and touched it to the bottom of the cluster. Bees marched on the frame and I saw a queen. She was not the queen from the strong hive. She was not marked, and I marked the queen from the strong hive about a month ago and have seen no evidence of a primary swarm. I got her in a queen catcher clip and put her in a nuc. It appears that the swarm is in the nuc for now. I will probably release her tomorrow evening and see if they stay.

I did not see any bees emerging from any of my hives and joining the swarm after I saw the bees in the air and it was not a big enough swarm that I would have noticed a reduced population in any of my hives. It is definitely not a primary swarm, but the queen was not particularly small, and from its size, it appeared to be a mated queen. I guess I will find out if they stay.

The remains of somebody's trap out, maybe?

Or a hive in a tree destroyed by SHB?

There's a number of possibilities.

Suicide swarm. It left the box this afternoon and I put it back in. It left again and went to the same spot on the bush where it had been. This time it was no bigger than a baseball. I did not attempt to hive it again and a few hours later it was gone.