[stan.vick]

I'm certainly no expert, but my guess is that the old queen left with the swarm and those three queens could have produced after swarms, the bees not paying much notice of the queens indicates they are not mated.

 

[Cub]

I placed each queen in a nuc with about a third of the vacced up bees per box. Two of them were in queen clips, and the other was released. The one I released seemed to be the one the workers preferred. All of the nucs had drawn comb.

 

[WilMorris]

Very interesting. Would love to hear the results.

 

[odfrank]

A few weeks ago I had a Warre hive swarm.

1 queen dead on the vacuum floor
1 queens dead in front of the hive day 1
2 dead queens in front of the hive day 2
2 dead queens in front of the hive day 3
1 queen took over original hive
1 queen in took over in the swarm

And those were only the ones I spotted.