Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I watched the arrival of a swarm at one of my bait hives around 1:15pm Saturday. I heard it first, then saw the small cloud of bees arrive. They seemed disorganized and did not fan like new arrivals usually do. I looked in on them after they had settled in. There are less than a medium frame of bees, and ever since they have settled, there has been a ball of bees at the bottom of the frame. I have not tried to break it up, but it looks like bees balling a queen. I don't know why they would do this--if they don't like her, it should have been over by now. If they are trying to protect her--from what? If there is no queen--why ball?

I'm posting this in the swarm section, but do have a question. Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone have an answer (or even a good guess) about the dynamics of this arrival?

Just a guess, but I would say likely an abscond from aa SHB slimed hive. The bees are trying to clean the queen.

As good a guess as any. She is walking around on the frame and an occasional forager is coming back with pollen, so I may wind up with a really small colony to play with.

The queen is laying, so this morning, I caught her and marked her green. Later today, I'm taking a swarm nuc with queen to another beekeeper. My plan is to let the remaining bees in that swarm experience queenlessness from this morning until early evening and then newspaper combine the strange swarm queen and her bees with the now queenless swarm. Fun and games.