What happend?

[Dean]

My bees swarmed and clustered in a hemlock 20 feet high nearby the hive.
As I looked on to figure out how I could retrieve them, the cluster dispersed and returned to the hive. Bees covered the landing board and ground in front of the hive. It took sometime for all bees to reenter the hive, I notice a small cluster infront of the hive which contained the queen. The queen was beating her wings and not flying. I lifted her to the landing board and she walked inside. My question is what just happend? Is it normal to swarm then return 45 minutes later? Is it possible my queen could not fly and caused this? I never requested a clipped queen but was does one look like? What should I do, anything?
Thank you, Dean

[Cacklewack]

Sounds like she couldn't fly, they put on the brakes and returned to her.

Does the colony have enough space? Did a significant number of bees remain in the hive while the swarm was hanging on the tree?

Cheers,
Matt

[Naturegoods]

You lucked out and get to keep your bees. The bees don't know that the queen can't fly until they swarm and she tries to fly with them. You even got to keep your queen, but there are probably queen cells in the hive ready to emerge in a few days and if you do not remove them the old q will have to go about eliminating her compitition. Or the bees will eliminate the old and keep a young good looking one with a nice thorax

[B Reeves]

split the hive, take the old queen and a couple of frames of bees some honey and pollen, do it as soon as possible
Bob

[Sam-Smith]

Lol a younger queen who CAN fly The split is a good idea since they want to swarm they might try again with a different queen.