[Mountainboomer]

Hello , This is my second year keeping bees and we have been splitting hives this spring using swarm cells and saving the old queen in separate nucs. On two hives , 1 with 2 deeps the other with 1 deep, we split them two weeks ago leaving capped queen cells in the hive box and using nucs for the other cells and queen. 6 days later my son came in and told us that we had some swarms hanging on 2 hives {they were not from any of our nucs} , I just thought that they were bearding until I got there and it was not a bearding they were very calm swarms hanging from the bottom screen , we put them into two nucs {we had 2 swarms on 2 different hive boxes} , three days they were right back at the same locations under the hive boxes we collected them from. Any ideas ?

 

[Michael Bush]

They may be bearding. Did you see a queen? A beard on the bottom of a screened bottom board looks very much like a swarm...

 

[Mountainboomer]

Hello Michael , We did not find a queen , but they stayed on the bottom {outside of box} for 2 nights w/ lows in upper 30's and lower 40's and we had started to see some dead bees under them so we ended up putting them back into a sealed {cannot escape} nuc w/ sugar water feeder and a frame of sealed honey , we felt if in a day or 2 we'll take a good look for the queen ounce they settle down on the frames if not seen we'll try to reintroduce them back into the hive. Also , we did not see any wax being drawn out on the bottom. Thank you

 

[Michael Bush]

Put a tray in the SBB.