Well. I put a swarm on four frames of HSC with one frame of honey in PC in the middle last Wednesday. When I checked it this morning there were about a hundred bees in the nuc. They had moved some of the old honey from the PC to the HSC and gathered a little nectar, but sadly, they had flown the coop.
The swarm I installed on five frames os HSC sprayed with HFCS yesterday was on the outside of the box this morning. None inside of the box, they covered the outside and were under it too. It was a massive swarm so I thought that perhaps it was too crowded for them so I got another nuc body and sprayed the five frames of HSC and shook the bees back into the box. Or at least I tried to. It turned into a chinese fire drill and they took flight.
Geez there was a bunch of bees in the air. Earlier I found a tiny swarm on the ground under the Oak tree. I put a two frame nuc next to it so they could walk into it. But the gigantic swarm in the air made them take flight too. Eventully they landed on the limb just over where the tiny one was earlier. Except now it was huge but I had to leave for work so I just set a nuc a few inches under it and hoped for the best.
Before leaving I looked under the nuc box where the large swarm came from and found a small clump of bees balling what I suposed was a queen. So I tossed it into the nearly empty nuc with the hundred bees on HSC.
When I came home the swarm in the tree was gone
but in the redbud tree was an even larger one
on the trunk about twenty foot up
So I set up three scaffolds that would make Darwin proud (except I tied it to the tree). I took one of the styrofome nucs with 3 HSC frames and two frames with wax from cut-outs way up there and started scooping bees off the trunk and into the nuc. I decided that there were way too many bees to fit in the nuc so I quit when I saw that they were fanning leaving a good three pounds on the tree. I took the nuc to the yard and opened it up, I was glad to see that they were not coming out.
I was tending to a cut-out I did this afternoon, a sloppy job of just vacing bees and stuffing comb into a bucket. I am sure that I lost the queen. Eh, no matter. On my way home I stopped and trimmed a tiny hive out of a bush that had two combs about the size of your hand. I had put it in a deep nuc and installed sc medium frames over it and set it next to the homeless and queenless bucket of bees when I noticed swarming again
I figured they were coming out of the just installed nuc, but no those were staying put. It was the bees that I left in the tree swarming into the nuc with the hundred bees and the balled queen! Wow, go figure!
So, what looked like this morning to be two refused HSC nucs turned out to be two very large and reinstalled swarms. Sometimes things work out no matter what you do.
The first nuc had one framd of honey and four HSC that was not sprayed.
The second one had five frames of HSC that was sprayed with HFCS (perhaps fermented?)
Both swarms left but were possibly overcrowded.
I'm not sold on the HSC yet, but it could be my fault for not giving them enough room.