Guilfordbeekeepers.org

This less than 1 frame swarm showed up about 5:00pm Wednesday. A shot of Swarm Commander convinced them to settle on the dogwood. I put the queen in a queen catcher clip over night and released her in the nuc this morning. I'll check on them in the morning and add more frames to the nuc if it looks like they have settled in. If she starts laying, I will look for a frame of brood and nurse bees from another hive to give them a boost.

I'll be looking for a frame to boost. The queen is already laying, so I want to see what she can do.

This did turn out to be a "suicide swarm." On the final abscond from the nuc box, the queen and a few of her loyal subjects came toward one of my hives and she received a fatal sting. I found her near death on my driveway pad near one hive, surrounded by about 10 of her workers. A handful of bees remain in the nuc making a feeble attempt at producing a queen cell. I tried.