2 swarms in 1 week...complete beginner & just wax foundation

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Do you need to find the queen and put her in first to encourage the other bees to go in?

I’m up for doing whatever is easiest too!

nope, just take the crownboard off, remove the middle few frames then just dump the boxful in then gently put the frames back on top of the pile, the frames will then sink into place as the bees move on to the foundation.
This white sheet and walk them in nonsense harks back all the way to Victorian days, and they got it from skeppists (which, in their case was an understandable manipulation)
It just developed into a kind of showboating parlour trick which, in the great British Beekeeping tradition of 'accepted knowledge' was carved into that apocryphal tablet of stone held in some secret location by the BBKA

 

[RichardK]

I’m guessing you must have a huge amount of bee activity where you live if you actually witnessed two swarms flying over? I’ve never seen a swarm before....ever

The bait hives were in our garden which is a fair size as we're rural....it's not massive, massive though. Lived here 14 years & never seen or heard a swarm before this year. We work from home & just happened to be outside when they flew over - we heard them before we saw them.

 

[user 20297]

nope, just take the crownboard off, remove the middle few frames then just dump the boxful in then gently put the frames back on top of the pile, the frames will then sink into place as the bees move on to the foundation.
This white sheet and walk them in nonsense harks back all the way to Victorian days, and they got it from skeppists (which, in their case was an understandable manipulation)
It just developed into a kind of showboating parlour trick which, in the great British Beekeeping tradition of 'accepted knowledge' was carved into that apocryphal tablet of stone held in some secret location by the BBKA

Praise be for commonsense advice.

After trying the traditional method as very clearly described in a video by Stuart Spinks, the bees cleared off back to their chosen branch. So I tried again using the JBM method described above, ballsed it up a little by trying to secateur the thin branch rather than just a sharp tap, and got about 30% of the bees into a hive. But luckily I must have nabbed the queen, and within twenty minutes they had all come home.
If they leave again I defer to their better judgement and they can do what they want, but it looks likely to rain later so I hope they stay home.

PS. I had the white sheet still in place on my second attempt and it did seem to help the "slower" bees orient to the hive.