Swam returns to hive, Mating swam?

[andytat]

An AF hive issued a medium sized swam at 4.00 pm this afternoon. I calculate the queen hatched between 3-8 days ago, from my records. I left only one queen cell.

It settled like an ordinary swam in the top of an apple tree 15 feet up about 20 yards form the hive. I amused it was a cast and I had missed a queen cell, so did not watch it carefully.

I carried on inspecting other hives and was working out how to catch it, when the whole swam started to return to its original hive 1hour 10minutes after emerging.

I was a mating swam? or something else. It doesn't seem to match the descriptions mating flights I have read.

Andy

 

[thorn]

My neighbour told me that I'd had a swarm about 3 weeks ago (she's seen enough to know what a swarm looks like), but when I inspected the following weekend, the marked queen was there. She was a couple of years old, so it certainly wasn't a mating flight.
Could she have been exercising a woman's perogative?