Accidental swarm merger!

[Ru78]

Afternoon all,
Just want to see if this has happened to anyone else.. and what to watch out for as I'm new to this!

Quick background is we have 2 hives, 1 revived a swarm 10 days ago, settled down fine, happily drawing out comb, laying eggs... then a week after that swarm was given to us, we were given a second swarm, which we collected in our hive...

The second swarm was pretty reticent about running in, but did eventually... we then loaded it wrapped in a sheet into the car and took it to its site (about a hive and a half's distance from the hive 1... time was 8pm... we unwrapped the second hive and placed it on the stand, at which point the bees started to exit rapidly! It then looked like they were headed for hive 1...

Following day on inspection, no bees at all in the second hive, but hive 1 (just a brood box) is now rammed!! Obviously need to get a super on there...

But is this usual... or have I done something wrong? I didn't see the queen on running the bees in, so not sure if she was ever there, but they had stayed happily in a skep for 24hrs...

Anyway, thoughts would be interesting... sorry for the long read!
Ru

 

[MuswellMetro]

There be will be lots of IF, BUTs and maybes in any answer but two scenarios are that the virgin queen left the skep on a mating flight or she was damaged while you tranfered them to the hive

 

[oliver90owner]

Yes. most likely no queen - but this is a funny year!

Never had it happen to any swarms I have had and I doubt many others have, either.

Maybe the bees only went in the hive 'cos the weather outside was atrocious (and the 'weather' inside the box was at least dry).

A bit of a guess, though.

RAB

 

[Chris Luck]

I've had similar happen on more than one occasion although I've never been clear why. In my cases the bees have been happy to go in their hive but have "moved in" with their next door neighbours the following day. If there are two queens then they sort it out and so far I have ended up with one Q+ colony. It's quite clear when it happens that the "receiving" colony doesn't now what is going on but relatively little fighting occurs.

Chris

 

[Ru78]

Thanks,
All a bit confusing at the time, and had visions of both swarms absconding... but have settled down well now. Guess they sorted it out.

Weather at the time was dry but cool, late on in the evening, probably 8pm... guess they'd rather have an old hive then a brand new one!

Ru