Hi everybody. New here and just made an intro post in Introduction Forum.
A little background before my main question.....My wife (Sandy) and I started our colony with a 5-frame nuc in March. Italian bees. We transferred them to a Langstroth brood box (10 frame) on the first warm sunny day. Everything was going great. The colony grew rapidly, so fast that it swarmed 2 days after I added another brood box 6 weeks from purchase date. Nine days later was another swarm. OK, we are learning and think we know where we went wrong.
On to the question... Yesterday, 10 days after swarm 2, it looked like they were swarming again

. I hurriedly set out my nuc box, added some lemongrass oil to it, in hopes of capturing this swarm. The tornado of bees grew but only went 10-15 feet in the air as opposed to the 30-40 feet with the 2 previous swarms. After perhaps 15 minutes the bee tornado subsided and they all went back to the colony . The colony was agitated for the remainder of the day. Everything seems back to normal today.
What could that have been? Was a swarm somehow stopped or is this some behavior that I haven't read about?
Thanks,
Kelly