Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I've learned over the years to generally ignore any small swarms after about mid-July, but went up on my roof yesterday morning to inspect my home colonies and found a pile of bees on the deck under one of my hives. Not sure when or where they came from... I scrounged up a 5-frame medium box with two frames of honey and three empty drawn combs, and got about 95% of the bees to very quickly march right in. Went about my inspections and later looked down to see a queen on the ground with the remainder of the swarm attending to her. Got her in a clip, released her at the entrance, and by the time I was done all had calmed down and the swarm was settled in the nuc.

I have no idea how they will establish themselves and grow to a point to survive winter, but this might give me a chance to play with putting them on a double-screened board over a strong colony. Assuming they stick around and this is actually a healthy laying queen...

I like collecting and playing with the small, late absconds that tend to show up at my house in August or September. If I can get the abscond to settle in and start functioning, I feel better about using these bees to do presentations later in the season and in less than ideal weather conditions; I am not putting a good hive that is well on its way to winter preparation in harm's way. Yesterday, I was able to provide one of the queens from a small abscond to a beekeeper whose hive was queenless and at least give him a shot at getting the bees over winter. I combined the now queenless bees into another small abscond in hopes that the "larger" colony of bees will have a better chance of surviving. None of what I am doing with these bees makes a lot of sense from a bee production or honey production standpoint, but it sure is fun!

Agree! This one seems to be thriving and did have a queen that immediately started laying. They are covering 5 medium frames, and I am keeping them going for the reasons you stated - mainly having a "spare" queen if needed.

We'll see what happens...

Turns out my first instinct was correct - there was no way this tiny swarm at the end of August would be able to build up in population to survive the winter. I had them in a 5-frame medium with another 5 medium frames of honey above them, insulation board on under the lid, with the entire setup wrapped in Reflectix like a Christmas present and tucked between two other hives.

I saw activity today at the entrance, so opened them up to see how they were doing. The activity was just a little robbing, as the little tennis ball-sized cluster (at best) inside was dead...

Thanks for sharing Reedyfork.