I retrieved a large swarm today from a neighbour's tree . They had come from the chimney of a house just over the road . The colony had been in the chimney for some time , possibly years . The guy who owned the chimney had decided to get rid of them today by smoking them out so it wasn't a " natural " swarm . Went back this evening and collected the skep in which the bees seemed to have settled and rehived the swarm some miles away . The skep seemed to be quite light given the number of bees and I wondered if this could be because the bees hadn't had time to gather food before leaving , so we gave them a rapid feeder with 1.5 litres of 1 : 1 sugar solution . As a fairly new beekeeper I would appreciate thoughts / comments on what else I could / should have done .