Where did this queen come from?

[BjornBee]

I caught a large swarm and on day three I removed the queen. I placed some grafted cells into the hive at that time, knowing none of the eggs the old queen layed would be hatched prior to my own queens.

Today, (Day 11) I went to count the queen cells, and what to my surprise, a queen running around the frame. I pulled her and then checked the frames. No queen cells, other than on the grafting bar. No fresh eggs. Just the larvae from a week ago.

Hopefully the bees will tell me Monday if any of the cells had been killed by this rogue queen.

If I had a virgin queen in the swarm originally, and perhaps she went on a second or third day of mating, I could see her perhaps going back to the original hive. But this was a laying queen from the day I caught the swarm, so no such mating flight would of been made. And I have never had a queen return to a hive, even if it was in the same yard. So my question is ...

Is it possible for a queen to gain entry to a hive that has no active queen? Could she of come from another hive and just walked in?

Anyone want to suggest what happened that I had a queen on Day 11 from no queen cell within the hive?

Thank you.

[BjornBee]

Virgin queen in the swarm with the primary queen?

Could this happen and yet the queen cells still allowed to progress to day 11 without harm?

[iddee]

I have been told that there can sometimes be as high as four queens in a swarm. I have no proof of this, just beekeeper stories. As for the queen leaving the cells in tact, I don't have an answer to that one.

[peggjam]

Seems a mated queen would be less likey to tear down queen cells than a virgin would. I'd hazzard a guess that you had more than one mated queen in that swarm.

[tecumseh]

like iddee hypothesis what follows is wives tales told second hand...

several folks have suggested to me over the years that a virgin or newley mated queen sense of direction is not the best and that groups of queenless bees will sometime accept a new mated queen that did not spring from this same group of bees.

[MountainCamp]

Is this hive in a yard with others hives that are rearing queens or where there could be virgin queens taking mating flights?
If so, then a virgin queen on a mating flight may simply have returned to the wrong hive. She was accepted because they were queenless.
Check the other hives for being queenless.

[ May 22, 2006, 06:29 AM: Message edited by: MountainCamp ]

[clintonbemrose]

I caught a swarm 2 years ago that had 5 queens in it 1 older queen that was marked and 4 virgin queens. It was almost 10 pounds of bees.
I got 5 good working hives from it. These bees were Carnolian and I only had Itallian at the time.
That was the hardest swarm I ever captured. It was on the corner of the roof of my garage.

Clint