How soon can a caught swarm be merged with original colony?

[For want of a better word]

Had the good fortune to capture a swarm soon after it had left the hive.
How soon could that swarm be merged with the original colony?

 

[SimonB]

I did it the same day, had no more equipment and didn't want to lose them as I suspect they had issued at least one other cast and numbers were dwindling. I thought I had been thorough and destroyed all but 1 QC in the Q- part of an A/S.

This was on Sunday, I plan to check them tomorrow to see what the state of the colony is. Used simple newspaper method, here's hoping they've accepted the new tenants and more importantly the virgin.

 

[masterBK]

If you unite the swarm back to the parent colony soon after swarming they will probably produce another set of queen cells (I assume you have destroyed the original set) and when the first one is sealed off they will go again (so basically you would be well advised not to go down this route).

A better approach is to move the original parent hive a few yards away to one side and hive the swarm on the original site (giving it the supers from the parent colony). The foragers will boost the swarm and honey production will not be affected very much. You also need to go into the parent colony and destroy all queen cells except a good sized unsealed one. One week later check the chosen cell is OK and destroy any emergency cells that they tend to produce in the absence of the queen. Also move the parent colony to the other side of the swarm to shunt even more foragers into the swarm. One month later when new queen in parent colony is laying OK then you can remove old queen from swarm and unite parent colony to it. With a young queen and all the bees back together you should get plenty of honey and hopefully no more attempts to swarm this season.

 

[For want of a better word]

Thanks MasterBK... in this case I am not interested in honey production, but using the queen that left with the swarm for queen rearing.

A Jenter cage had been put in the colony 3 days prior (Wednesday) to swarming so that the bees could clean it up, swarm was yesterday ( Thursday)
queen was due to go into Jenter on Sunday.
Now have original hive that swarm issued from sitting next to the hive that the captured swarm is in ( with qe on bottom) both have feeders on.
The original colony was inspected on Wednesday when the Jenter was place in it and there were no queen cells apparent!

Perhaps I should add the bees are Cornish Apis mellifera mellifera that match all the criteria morphologically for the sub~species ( Results of CO1 DNA testing ... pending!)

Simon B thanks... let us know how they get on !
Cheers folks