it was a no brainer something was bad wrong.
i could hear the commotion all the way across my yard. when i got to the hive, there were many hundreds of bees in the air, and all over the hive, and even bearding. not to mention all the fighting at the entrance and the 100 or so dead bees on the ground.
my first thought was, robbing! oh s...! and the thought of instant karma came to mind because of all the robbing i talked about in the other thread.
but i soon realized that it would have more likely been because of me.
what i mean is i moved this hive to the stand last weekend, from about 100' away.
it was in a nearby location, which just happened to be where it was caught, by flying into my swarm trap on 042612.
it was a small swarm, about a half a deep of bees, i gave it a frame of mostly capped brood and that was it.
without feeding, it was able to fill the deep and one and a half mediums. that top super is 100% drawn and 70% full. the bottom super was added with foundation only, to serve as slatted racks, but there is brood comb now drawn on it extending the brood nest part of the way down on the middle most frames.
my mistake, (or possible mistake, who knows?), is that instead of waiting until later in the season, i went ahead and moved them last week.
it was my first time to relocate a hive within my home yard without first taking the hive five miles away to my out yard.
i followed MB's (micheal bush) advice and used leafy cedar branch tips stapled over the entrance. it worked fine, and no bees were left at the old site.
but, i realized that i forced a 'colony decision' (per MB) on the bees, by making them reoriente.
i also realize that the usurpers could have still found and invaded the young colony at the original site, so, we'll never know.
anyway, i'm thinking robbing, and decide to close them up and move them, when out of the blue, my mentee says, 'hey, look at the pile of bees under the hives".
hmmm, i says, the only time i see them doing that is when there is a queen.
so, low and behold, there her majesty was. caught her, and maybe missed out on on letting some rare genetics into my yard but, but i figured i didn't really want them anyway if the traits included usurpation.
do i do right?