August Swarm

[Noho bees]

Its been unusualy hot in western MA the past few days. This morning I went to remove the entrance reducer in my hives and found a large swarm hanging out on the peach trees not far (20-30 feet) from my hive. I can only assume the swarm comes from my large colony that on last look two weeks ago was doing allright had eggs and brood. It has two deep brood boxes a queen excluder a deep that is almost filled with honey and a recently added super. When I inspected the hive 2 weeks ago I only got into the second hive body to look for queen cells. At that time there were only a few small cups, nothing layed, no royal jelly. I have Russian bees that are prone to puttinig up queen cups- but thought I was ok.

But this AM there was a swarm. So like many others on this forum I question putting the caught swarm colony back in its original hive or putting it in a nuc. We are in August. The goldenrod is just beginning to get going, I think this She lays well.
She is a new queens from a spring swarm.

Should I combine her back in to the old hive? Use newspaper? Cut queen cells? Put her in a new nuc?

[power napper]

Welcome to the forum noho--If it were me I would start another colony with the swarm, you can feed if the necessity arises!

[Propolis30]

I agree. I would just feed feed feed.

[ScadsOBees]

And if they don't have enough before winter or something goes wrong, then you can combine them. You are probably not going to miss any harvestable honeyflows at this point because of the swarm.

-rick

[peggjam]

If you are in an area with good goldenrod flows, I wouldn't even feed. Give them a frame or two of open nector and they should build up fine. Just be sure they have enough to get through the winter on, which could be given late Sept/early Oct.

[MountainCamp]

August is getting late to have them build up enough for winter. Not many brood cycles left for this season.
That said, if the swarm queen is an already mated queen, you have other hives to get brood from and some stores.
There is not reason why you could not get them through till spring.
I picked up an hive last October from NJ, and when I got it home, there were all of 5 frames of comb bees and stores. The entrance reducer was left on all summer and as soon as things got congested at the entrance they must of swarmed.
I added frames of stores and set them up for winter. They current have 6 supers on and I made a split from them in June.